Centre for Policy on Ageing



Differential age-related processing limitations in recall and recognition tasks
Author(s)	Wythe L Whiting IV, Anderson D Smith
Journal title	Psychology and Aging, vol 12, no 2, June 1997
Pages	pp 216-224
Keywords	Memory and Reminiscence ; Cognitive processes ; Age groups [elderly] ; Young adults [20-25] ; Performance ; Comparison ; United States of America.
Annotation	The degree to which processing resources are responsible for age differences in performance on recall and recognition tasks was examined in this study. To examine this, a secondary task incorporating a memory component was implemented during retrieval. Results revealed that older adults, relative to younger adults, exhibited greater decrements in secondary task performance as the difficulty of the secondary task increased. The age differences were greater in the recall task than in the recognition task. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that speed accounted for the largest proportion of age-related variance in the recall task, while both speed and working memory contributed to much of the secondary task variance. Results confirm the hypothesis that recall requires greater processing capacity than recognition, and that older adults have greater processing capacity limitations than younger adults.
Accession Number	CPA-971120251 A
Classmark	DB: DA: BB: SD6: 5H: 48: 7T
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.