Encoding difficulty and memory enhancement for young and older readers.

Memory for text that required active construction (generation) on the part of the reader to comprehend some of the information was examined. (Letters were deleted from the words composing some of the idea units of the text). For both high school students and older adults, idea units that had letters deleted were remembered better than idea units with intact words on a cued-recall test. This pattern held for easier as well as for harder letter deletions. It was concluded that retention of textually presented information can be improved in older adults if the presentation format of the text induces or guides mental operations that support good encoding. Production-deficiency accounts and attentional/resource deficiency accounts of age-related memory decrements are discussed in light of the present results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Process and strategy in memory for speech among younger and older adults.

Younger and older adults listened to and immediately recalled short passages of speech that varied in the rate of presentation and in the degree of linguistic and prosodic cuing. Although older adults showed a differential decrease in recall performance as a function of increasing speech rate, age differences in recall were reduced by the presence of linguistic and prosodic cues. Under conditions of optimum linguistic redundancy, older adults were also found to add more words and to make more meaning-producing reconstructions in recall. Differences in overall performance are accounted for in terms of age-related changes in working memory processing and strategy utilization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit and explicit memory in young and older adults.

In three experiments, young and older adults were compared on both implicit and explicit memory tasks. The size of repetition priming effects in word completion and in perceptual identification tasks did not differ reliably across ages. However, age-related decrements in performance were obtained in free recall, cued recall, and recognition. These results, similar to those observed in amnesics, suggest that older adults are impaired on tasks which require conscious recollection but that memory which depends on automatic activation processes is relatively unaffected by age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Metamemorial predictors of memory performance in young and older adults.

The relationship between aspects of knowledge about memory and immediate and delayed recall on prose and word-list tasks was examined. Ss were 100 young and 100 older adults. Vocabulary ability was screened. Memory knowledge was assessed by the Metamemory in Adulthood (MIA) scale and the Short Inventory of Memory Experiences (SIME). Capacity and change measures of the MIA correlated with most dimensions of the SIME for both age groups. The anxiety measure of the MIA correlated with SIME measures only for the young. Regression analyses showed that strategy (MIA) predicted performance only for young adults, change (MIA) predicted performance only for older adults, and capacity (MIA) predicted performance for both age groups. Metamemory variables accounted for equivalent amounts of variance in both prose and word-list tasks, although there was an indication that prediction was slightly better for prose. Future researchers need to address the apparent increase in affect-related predictors of memory performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The benefits and costs of repeated memory tests for young and older adults.

Repeated and prolonged searches of memory can lead to an increase in how much is recalled, but they can also lead to memory errors. These 3 experiments addressed the costs and benefits of repeated and prolonged memory tests for both young and older adults. Participants saw and imagined pictures of objects, some of which were physically or conceptually similar, and then took a series of repeated or prolonged recall tests. Both young and older adults recalled more on later tests than on earlier ones, though the increase was less marked for older adults. In addition, despite recalling less than did young adults, older adults made more similarity-based source misattributions (i.e., claiming an imagined item was seen if it was physically or conceptually similar to a seen item). Similar patterns of fewer benefits and more costs for older adults were seen on both free and forced recall tests and on timed and self-paced tests. Findings are interpreted in terms of age-related differences in binding processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Direct and indirect measures of memory for modality in young and older adults.

In 2 experiments, young and older adults demonstrated modality effects of similar magnitude in perceptual identification tasks. That is, both young and older adults demonstrated more repetition priming when study and test modalities matched than when they were different, suggesting that contextual information was equally available across age. However, when asked explicitly to retrieve modality information, older adults were less accurate than young adults. These results constitute evidence for a dissociation between direct and indirect measures of memory for modality information. They call into question hypotheses that memory impairment in old age is due to deficient encoding of contextual information and challenge current accounts of modality effects in repetition priming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Schematic knowledge influences on memory for scene information in young and older adults.

Two experiments were conducted to examine the hypothesis that aging is associated with an increase in schema-related influences on memory performance. In both studies, groups of young and older adults studied organized and unorganized visual scenes containing objects that varied in their likelihood of occurrence. Measures of attention allocation and memory for both objects and their relative locations were obtained. Consistent with expectations, attention allocation during study was disrupted more by lack of scene organization in the older adults. In addition, relatively systematic age differences were also obtained for retention, with greater schematic effects observed in the memory performance of older adults than in that of young adults. The results are discussed relative to current views of aging and cognitive change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Viewing instructions impact emotional memory differently in older and young adults.

The current study examines how the instructions given during picture viewing impact age differences in incidental emotional memory. Previous research has suggested that older adults' memory may be better when they make emotional rather than perceptual evaluations of stimuli and that their memory may show a positivity bias in tasks with open-ended viewing instructions. Across two experiments, participants viewing photographs either received open-ended instructions or were asked to make emotionally focused (Experiment 1) or perceptually focused (Experiment 2) evaluations. Emotional evaluations had no impact on older adults' memory, whereas perceptual evaluations reduced older adults' recall of emotional, but not of neutral, pictures. Evidence for the positivity effect was sporadic and was not easier to detect with open-ended viewing instructions. These results suggest that older adults' memory is best when the material to be remembered is emotionally evocative and they are allowed to process it as such. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Direct and indirect tests of memory for category exemplars in young and older adults.

Young and older adults were compared on direct (cued recall) and indirect (exemplar generation) tests of memory for category members. Because category names served as cues in both tasks, amount of retrieval support was constant across tasks. Although older adults produced fewer category members in cued recall, priming of category exemplars in the generation task did not vary with age. These results suggest that age constancy in priming tasks does not depend on physical similarity between study materials and retrieval cues provided at test and point to the importance of deliberate recollection as a factor in determining the extent of age differences in memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Source memory for action in young and older adults: Self vs. close or unknown others.

The present study examines source memory for actions (e.g., placing items in a suitcase). For both young and older adult participants, source memory for actions performed by the self was better than memory for actions performed by either a known (close) or unknown other. In addition, neither young nor older adults were more likely to confuse self with close others than with unknown others. Results suggest an advantage in source memory for actions performed by the self compared to others, possibly associated with sensorimotor cues that are relatively preserved in aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spacing as the friend of both memory and induction in young and older adults.

We compared the effects of spaced versus massed practice on young and older adults' ability to learn visually complex paintings. We expected a spacing advantage when 1 painting per artist was studied repeatedly and tested (repetition) but perhaps a massing advantage, especially for older adults, when multiple different paintings by each artist were studied and tested (induction). We were surprised to find that spacing facilitated both inductive and repetition learning by both young and older adults, even though the participants rated massing superior to spacing for inductive learning. Thus, challenging learners of any age appears to have unintuitive benefits for both memory and induction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of verbal elaborations on memory in young and older adults

The Stein paradigm was used to examine the circumstances under which verbal elaborations enhance memory in young and older adults. Subjects studied target adjectives that were embedded in one of three sentence contexts that varied in elaboration of the subject-adjective relationship: (1) nonelaborated base sentences; (2) base sentences with semantically consistent, but arbitrary verbal, elaborations; and (3) base sentences with explanatory verbal elaborations that clarified the significance of the subject-adjective relationship. The presence of the elaborations was varied at encoding and retrieval, and cued recall of the target adjectives was tested with incidental and intentional learning procedures. In Experiments 1A and 1B, explanatory elaborations at encoding and retrieval yielded the largest memorial facilitation for both young and older adults, and the benefit was comparable for the incidental and intentional learning measures. In Experiment 2, age-related differences in recall were minimal with explanatory elaborations at encoding and retrieval, but larger age differences occurred in the nonelaborated comparison conditions. In Experiment 3, explanatory elaborations present at encoding but not at retrieval enhanced recall when the original Stein stimuli were used, but not with the present stimuli. The implications of these results with regard to the mnemonic efficacy of verbal elaborations for young and older adults are discussed.     

Impact of sensory acuity on auditory working memory span in young and older adults.

The impact of sensory acuity, processing speed, and working memory capacity on auditory working memory span (L-span) performance at 5 presentation levels was examined in 80 young adults (18–30 years of age) and 26 older adults (60–82 years of age). Lowering the presentation level of the L-span task had a greater detrimental effect on the older adults than on the younger ones. Furthermore, the relationship between sensory acuity and L-span performance varied as a function of age and presentation level. These results suggest that declining acuity plays an important explanatory role in age-related declines in cognitive abilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Encoding orientation and the remembering of schizophrenic young adults.

Schizophrenic memory following an experimenter-imposed encoding task was examined in a levels-of-processing framework. In Session 1, 17 schizophrenics (mean age 23.5 yrs), 17 nonschizophrenic psychiatric patients (mean age 24.3 yrs), and 17 normal college students (mean age 20.0 yrs) were required to make yes–no judgments about whether a probe word contained 2 letters, rhymed with a word, belonged to a conceptual category, or fitted into a sentence. In Session 2, they were required to produce an appropriate word for each question. The 3 groups recalled semantically processed words better than nonsemantically processed words and "yes" words better than "no" words and revealed similar recall and recognition patterns over the different levels of encodings. However, the schizophrenics' recall for "yes" words (Session 1) and for the self-generated words (Session 2) was inferior to that of normals. Theoretical implications are discussed. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sustained-attention capacity in young and older adults.

The sustained-attention capacity of young (21–29 years) and older (65–78 years) adults was examined using a high-event rate digit-discrimination vigilance task presented at 3 levels of stimulus degradation. Increased stimulus degradation led to a reduction in the hit rate and to a greater decline in hit rate over blocks (increased vigilance decrement). Sensitivity (d') declined over blocks only at the highest level of stimulus degradation. Older adults had a lower hit rate and showed greater vigilance decrement than young adults, particularly when stimuli were highly degraded. However, both age groups showed the same pattern of stability in sensitivity when stimulus degradation was moderate, and sensitivity decrement over time when stimulus degradation was high. The results suggest that the process of sustained allocation of capacity—as reflected in temporal changes in sensitivity—operates similarly in young and older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reducing gist-based false recognition in older adults: Encoding and retrieval manipulations.

Using a categorized pictures paradigm, Koutstaal and Schacter (1997) reported high levels of false recognition of lures that were categorically related to presented items. Although also shown by younger adults, false recognition was markedly higher for older adults. To probe the factors underlying this age difference, these experiments required participants to engage in more careful scrutiny of the items at retrieval or to notice specific differentiating perceptual features of the objects during encoding. False recognition was reduced with each of these manipulations, but neither manipulation, either separately or together, eliminated the age difference in false recognition. Older adults can considerably reduce false recognition if encouraged to use more stringent decision criteria. Persistent difficulty in opposing familiarity-based responding and comparatively more generic encoding may contribute to residual deficits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autobiographical remembering and hypermnesia: A comparison of older and younger adults.

This study examined age differences in autobiographical memory and extended findings concerning hypermnesia in laboratory tasks to a real world event, the announcement of the verdict in the O. J. Simpson murder trial. Older and younger adults repeatedly recalled the event in a single session. Interviews were coded for amount and type of accurate information and for errors. The age groups did not differ in ability to recall the gist of the event or in the number of errors made. Younger adults were better at remembering when the event had occurred. Both age groups showed hypermnesia. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of autobiographical memory across the life span and the phenomenon of hypermnesia in everyday memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prospective memory and self-reports of memory abilities in older adults.

Investigated age differences in prospective memory, and the relations among metamemory, reported use of memory aids, and actual performance on prospective memory tasks. Ss were 83 males and 145 females, aged 30–99 yrs, (with approximately equal numbers in each of the age ranges of 30–39, 40–49, 50–59, 60–69 and 70+ yrs) who completed a metamemory questionnaire and 2 prospective memory tests. Findings of the metamemory task show an age-related increase in reported memory problems. The pattern of correlations revealed that metamemory scores and prospective remembering performance were often negatively correlated (especially for the 30-yr-old people). The correlations indicated either that people have poor knowledge about their own memory abilities or that their concept of memory is different from that of the psychologist. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Supplemental group discussions in memory training for older adults.

Memory training was compared in adults aged 60–80. Groups 1 and 2 studied a self-instructional memory training manual; Group 2 also attended supplementary group discussions of typical problems of later life, related coping methods, and the techniques in the self-instructional manuals. Group 3 was a wait–list control group. Memory performance on 2 word lists significantly improved in the supplemental discussion group but not in the group that only studied the self-instructional manual. Enhanced performances were maintained at a 1-month follow-up. Bibliotherapy alone may be inferior to treatment involving a group component, although the mechanisms of such enhancement remain unexplored with respect to memory training. Neither treated group improved their digit span or recall of names and a brief prose passage; teaching older adults the strategies of chunking and use of imagery may not be beneficial. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Incidence and functions of self-reported private speech in young adults: A self-verbalization questionnaire.

The present study employed a self-report approach to study the cognitive and self-regulatory functions of private speech (Vygotsky, 1934/1987, 1978) in young adults. The Self-Verbalization Questionnaire, assessing the use of self-directed speech, was administered to 1,132 undergraduate university students(aged 17–47 yrs). In general, self-verbalization scores were high. Exploratory factor analysis produced a four-factor solution that was readily interpretable in terms of Vygotskian theory. Consistent with the view that private speech serves as a cognitive tool system, the highest scores were reported for questionnaire items loading highly on a factor consisting of cognitive, mnemonic, and attentional uses of self-verbalization. The scales appear to have good internal consistency, high test-retest reliability, and good content and criterion validity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)