摘要 : Differences in professional choice and experience may explain age differences in working memoryperformance of elderly people. The aim of this study was to examine whether expertise and prolongedpractice in verbal and visuo-spatial... 展开 Differences in professional choice and experience may explain age differences in working memoryperformance of elderly people. The aim of this study was to examine whether expertise and prolongedpractice in verbal and visuo-spatial abilities reduce age differences in laboratory working memorytasks. The effects of age and expertise on working memory performance were examined in three agegroups in two different experiments. Firstly, the role of visuo-spatial expertise was analysed byexamining age differences in architects. Secondly, people with extensive experience in verbalabilities (literary people) were tested in order to evaluate the effect of professional verbal experience.Architects and literary people outperformed a group of unselected age peers on tasks related toprofessional expertise only, but not on general working memory tests. There was no interactionbetween age and experience, suggesting that professional experience does not increase differencesbetween experts and non experts and cannot modulate age-related effects. 收起