A biased test of the encoding shift hypothesis.

A recognition memory experiment with 72 8-, 11-, and 20-yr-olds investigated the hypothesis that with age, semantic encoding becomes increasingly important relative to acoustic encoding. Target words were paired with words related either semantically or acoustically in order to bias encoding in the direction of features common to both words. In support of the encoding shift hypothesis, recognition accuracy improved with age when encoding was biased semantically relative to accuracy when encoding was biased acoustically. (5 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)