Strategy use,recall, and recall organization in young,middle-aged,and elderly adults

Abstract

The application and transfer of free recall study strategies were examined for young, middle-aged, and elderly adults. Subjects were either instructed to use clustering and imagery, instructed to use their own study strategies, or given standard free recall instructions. Subjects at all age levels showed high initial use of categorization and low initial use of imagery. Subject-reported imagery increased after training, but categorization was the only strategy associated with higher recall levels. Training produced increases in recall clustering that were apparent only on a transfer list. The results provided evidence that adult age differences in memory occur even when middle-aged and elderly adults show evidence of categorization in recall.     

The effects of orienting tasks on adult age differences in recall and recognition

This research examined the type of recognition errors made following orienting task instructions in order to investigate possible age differences in the depth of processing of information to be learned. Eighteen young, 18 middle-aged, and 18 elderly adults viewed 48 words, each of which was accompanied by learning instructions or a phonological or semantic orienting task. Subjects were then presented previously-seen items paired with a synonym, rhyme, or unrelated word. Analyses revealed no age differences in the number or pattern of recognition errors. Middle-aged and elderly adults recalled fewer items than young adults and their recall scores were less affected by orienting task instructions. Results are discussed in the context of possible age differences in the depth and elaboration of processing during study.     

Age, presentation rate, and the effectiveness of structural and semantic recall cues

To replicate the results of research on age-related differences in the effectiveness of structural and semantic memory cues, 18 young, 18 middle-aged, and 18 elderly adults recalled three 20-item lists aided by category labels, or the initial two letters of each word, or no cues. Lists were presented at 1.5 or 4 sec presentation rates to evaluate the effects of changes in processing speed on age-related trends in cue effectiveness. Semantic cues were most effective in improving recall at all three age levels; structural cues produced intermediate levels of recall facilitation. There was no indication of reduced effectiveness of semantic cues with increases in age and presentation rate, suggesting factors other than age-related changes in the depth of processing are responsible for developmental differences in memory.     

Visual memory: adult age differences in map recall and learning strategies

Age differences in two aspects of map learning performance were examined: the amounts of material recalled and the reported learning strategies of young, middle-aged, and elderly adults were compared. Thirty women in each age group (mean ages 21, 43, and 69) learned three groups of eight landmarks on a single street map. Subjects learned one group of landmarks in each of three trial blocks; cumulative retention tests followed learning of each group of landmarks. After the session, subjects described their learning strategies. The age groups differed significantly in mean numbers of landmarks recalled; although age groups also differed significantly in the types of strategies reportedly used, the age group difference in reported learning strategy type did not account for the age group difference in recall performance. It was concluded that the age difference in map learning performance reflected either an age difference in ability or in reaction to the learning situation.     

Adult age differences in solving series problems requiring integration of new and old information

The ability of young and middle-aged adults to solve series problems was assessed with problems connected by either marked or unmarked adjectives. Half the participants given each type of problem were instructed to use imagery. Information needed to answer memory and inference questions was explicity provided, but additional information from semantic memory was needed to answer integration questions. Overall, there was no difference between age groups on the memory measure, but scores on both integration and inference measures were significantly lower for the middle-aged group, a result suggesting a deficit in the ability to manipulate items in working memory. Imagery instructions facilitated scores of both age groups equally for the integration measure, but affected neither memory nor inference scores, indicating that middle-aged adults are able to use imagery as a control process as effectively as younger adults, and also that imagery is most useful for developing an array. Finally, the only effect of adjective type was that marked adjectives significantly improved inference scores of middle-aged adults.     

Adult age differences in memory: effects of distinctive and common encodings

To clarify the role of encoding distinctiveness and encoding cue utilization in age-related memory differences, young and elderly adults were instructed either to generate distinctive or common adjectives for 40 nouns and given 3 study-recall trials for the nouns, both with no cues and with the adjectives that they had generated as cues. Their retention was compared with that of a control group that had rated the nouns for abstractness. Elderly adults were as likely as young adults to generate distinctive adjectives, but were less likely than young adults to generate common adjectives when instructed to do so. In both age groups, common adjective encodings produced superior free recall and distinctive adjective encodings produced superior cued recall. The results suggest that (1) elderly adults are as capable as young adults of generating distinctive encoding context cues when instructed to do so, and (2) age-related encoding differences occur in the processing of distinctive properties of the stimulus items themselves rather than in the utilization of cues generated during study.     

Pre-experimental knowledge facilitates episodic recall in young, young-old, and old-old adults

Younger adults (mean age = 19.6), 73-year-olds and 82-year-olds were examined on free recall of verbal materials varying in datedness (i.e., names of people who attained their fame during the 1930s or the 1980s). The main result was an interaction between age and type of materials. Whereas younger adults performed better for "new" than for "old" items, both elderly groups recalled more old than new items. A highlight of these data is that activation of pre-experimental knowledge structures appears to improve episodic recall in both young-old and old-old adults.     

The effects of memory elaboration on adult age differences in incidental recall

To test the hypothesis that elaboration of information declines with advancing age, young and elderly adults were tested for incidental recall of target words in base sentences, sentences for which precise (relevant) or imprecise (irrelevant) elaborations were provided, or sentences for which precise or imprecise elaborations were participant-generated. Age differences were greater when participants were instructed to generate precise elaborations than when they were provided precise elaborations, and elderly adults generated fewer precise elaborations than young adults. Results were discussed as reflecting the pervasiveness of elderly adults' difficulty in constructing effective elaborations.     

Prerequisites for lack of age differences in memory performance

Free recall performance of young and old adults was examined in three memory tasks: acts carried out by the subjects (subject-performed tasks or SPTs), sentences with imagery instructions, and sentences. The subjects were presented with the same verbal information in all three tasks. No age differences were observed on free recall of SPTs, whereas typical aging effects were obtained on free recall of the other tasks. This way the data from a previous study of no age effects on SPT recall were replicated. A hypothesis about imagery as a critical factor for the lack of age differences on SPT recall gained no support. Two main concepts were proposed to account for the data: Compensation among the elderly by means of the multimodal and rich properties of SPTs, and a superior ability for a spontaneous recoding of verbal information among young adults. The results were also discussed in relation to a presumption of memory tasks as varying in attentional demands.     

Age Differences in the Effects of Experimenter-Instructed Versus Self-Generated Strategy Use

Background/Study Context: Interactive imagery is superior to rote repetition as an encoding strategy for paired associate (PA) recall. Younger and older individuals often rate these strategies as equally effective before they gain experience using each strategy. The present study investigated how experimenter-supervised and participant-chosen strategy experience affected younger and older adults’ knowledge about the effectiveness of these two strategies.

Methods: Ninety-nine younger (M = 19.0 years, SD = 1.4) and 90 older adults (M = 70.4 years, SD = 5.2) participated in the experiment. In learning a first PA list participants were either instructed to use imagery or repetition to study specific items (supervised) or could choose their own strategies (unsupervised). All participants were unsupervised on a second PA list to evaluate whether strategy experience affected strategy knowledge, strategy use, and PA recall.

Results: Both instruction groups learned about the superiority of imagery use through task experience, downgrading repetition ratings and upgrading imagery ratings on the second list. However, older adults showed less knowledge updating than did younger adults. Previously supervised younger adults increased their imagery use, improving PA recall; older adults maintained a higher level of repetition use.

Conclusion: Older adults update knowledge of the differential effectiveness of the rote and imagery strategies, but to a lesser degree than younger adults. Older adults manifest an inertial tendency to continue using the repetition strategy even though they have learned that it is inferior to interactive imagery.     

Prerequisites for lack of age differences in memory performance

Abstract

Free recall performance of young and old adults was examined in three memory tasks: a) acts carried out by the subjects (subject-performed tasks or SPTs), b) sentences with imagery instructions, and c) sentences. The subjects were presented with the same verbal information in all three tasks. No age differences were observed on free recall of SPTs, whereas typical aging effects were obtained on free recall of the other tasks. This way the data from a previous study of no age effects on SPT recall were replicated. A hypothesis about imagery as a critical factor for the lack of age differences on SPT recall gained no support. Two main concepts were proposed to account for the data: Compensation among the elderly by means of the multimodal and rich properties of SPTs, and a superior ability for a spontaneous recoding of verbal information among young adults. The results were also discussed in relation to a presumption of memory tasks as varying in attentional demands.     

Meaningfulness and recall of names by young and old adults

Names from one of four list conditions (elderly-relevant, young-relevant, nonmeaningful) were presented to 56 young and 56 old adults. Contrary to the findings often reported in the gerontological literature on memory, with free recall the elderly adults remembered as many names as did the young. Superior performance for the young was observed only in the young-relevant list condition. The elderly adults recalled significantly more names than did the young from the elderly- and both-relevant lists. No differences were observed for the nonmeaningful list. When asked to rate their perceived performance on the memory task, however, the older adults rated themselves lower than the young adults.     

Instruction, induction, generation, and evaluation of strategies for solving search problems

Two experiments found that older adults can execute efficient strategies for search problems when instructed in their use. They continue to use these strategies after instruction and transfer their use to similar problems. The results did not support the contention that older adults can be led to discover efficient strategies by manipulation of salient stimulus features such as color. It seemed likely that age differences in search performance were due to deficiencies in strategy production. A third experiment directly examined the generation and evaluation of strategies by younger and older adults. Age differences were localized in optimal strategies; older adults were less likely to generate or use optimal strategies and rated them as less informative than did younger adults.     

Prose recall: effects of aging, verbal ability, and reading behavior

This paper describes an exploratory multivariate analysis designed to determine the relative contributions of age, verbal ability, education, reading habits, and recall strategies to the explanation of variation in performance on prose recall tasks among adults. Four hundred twenty-two adults in three age groups--young (18 to 32), middle (40 to 54) and old (62 to 80)--read and recalled in writing two 388-word prose passages and answered questions about their background, reading habits, and recall strategies. Results indicate that a decrease in quantity of recall appears with increasing age, though verbal ability is a better predictor of recall than is age. In addition, a recall strategy factor representing a paragraph-by-paragraph retrieval strategy produces the highest simple correlations with total recall and contributes significantly to the other recall measures.     

Levels upon levels: predicting age differences in text recall

Younger and older adults read and recalled narrative and expository prose passages of varying propositional density. Age differences in recall were smaller when text units were from higher levels in a coherence graph and when the young and elderly groups compared were higher in verbal ability. The extent to which age differences were moderated by these factors varied, however, as a function of text characteristics. These results reinforce the position that the extent of age differences in text recall depends on both text and reader characteristics.     

An inappropriate erythropoietic response to iron deficiency anaemia in the elderly

Summary This study was carried out to clarify the features of iron deficiency anaemia in the elderly. Subjects were chosen from residents undergoing an annual health check in a home for the aged and the features of anaemia in the elderly were compared with those in middle-aged adults under 60 years old. The red cell count, red cell size and haemoglobin content in an elderly group with iron-deficiency anaemia did not differ from those in middle-aged adults. No significant differences of the serum ferritin and iron levels were noted between the two groups. Total iron binding capacity was higher in the middle-aged adults than in the elderly, while the reticulocyte count was significantly lower in the elderly group. Immature reticulocytes showing a considerable amount of residual RNA by flow cytometry with fluorescent staining were also lower in the elderly group than in the middle-aged adults. Serum erythropoietin levels in both groups were significantly higher than in non-anaemic age-matched controls and no difference in erythropoietin levels was noted between them. The ratio of the reticulocyte count to the log-transformed erythropoietin level was low in the elderly group with iron-deficiency anaemia compared with the middle-aged adults with iron deficiency anaemia. The same result was seen when the immature reticulocyte count was related to the log-transformed erythropoietin level. These findings suggest that the red cell production response to erythropoietin in the elderly with iron-deficiency anaemia might be inappropriate compared with both non-anaemic and anaemic middle-aged adults.     

Adult age differences in free recall as a function of basis of organization and method of presentation.

To examine age-related differences in the discovery of intralist relationships, young and elderly adults were presented a free-recall list in either the conventional successive single-item format or in a whole-list display. A list that could be organized by associative or rhyming intralist relationships was used to test the levels-of-processing model of memory as an explanation of age differences in recall. Young adults recalled more base-words, associates, and rhymes than elderly subjects on immediate free and cued tests and on an uncued test one week later. Elderly subjects showed less utilization of both semantic and nonsemantic intralist relationships. Age did not interact with method of presentation. Recall and organization deficits occurred for elderly adults even though they were less anxious than young adults.     

Age differences in adults' free recall, cued recall, and recognition.

Adults in their twenties and sixties were tested for free recall, cued recall, and recognition of words that they had studied in an intentional memory task or generated associations to in an incidental orienting task. Significant age-related declines in performances on intentional items were observed regardless of type of memory test. Significant age-related declines in performance on incidental items were also observed on free and cued recall tests; however, age differences on incidental items were attenuated on cued recall tests, and they were eliminated on recognition tests. In addition, while younger subjects profited more from retrieval cues that were associations they had themselves generated than from retrieval cues that were normed common associations, older subjects made comparable use of these two cue types.     

Syntactic complexity and elderly adults' prose recall

Elderly adults in their 70s and 80s and middle-aged adults in their 40s and 50s recalled a series of paragraphs made up of single-clause sentences and sentences with right-branching or left-branching embedded or subordinate clauses. Overall, the middle-aged adults recalled 65% of the propositions regardless of syntactic form. While the elderly adults recalled 43% of the propositions from the single-clause sentences, they recalled 60% of the propositions from the right-branching clauses but only 22% of the propositions from the left-branching clauses. These results, in conjunction with prior research on elderly adults' production and imitation of complex syntactic constructions, demonstrate age-related changes in syntactic processing.     

Organizational strategies in immediate recall of rapid speech by young and elderly adults

Young and elderly adults heard recorded passages of meaningful prose with instructions to interrupt the speech at points of their choosing for immediate recall on a segment by segment basis. At normal speech rates both young and elderly subjects segmented passages primarily at coherent syntactic boundaries and showed equivalent recall performance. Increasing the passages' speech rate produced a significant reduction in recall performance for the elderly subjects relative to the young even though their segmentation strategies remained the same. Results were attributed to an age-sensitive encoding difficulty at a level higher than surface syntactic parsing.