We were concerned with the effects of item repetition, list length, and class of item on free recall in elderly as compared with young adults. In Experiment 1, samples of young and elderly adults recalled a list of 27 words and a list of 27 action events (minitasks performed by the subjects). Some items were presented once and some twice. Although the younger subjects showed better recall on both types of lists, the older sample benefited from item repetition as much as did the younger sample. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2. A second finding in Experiment 2 was a significant aging effect in the recall of long but not of short lists of both words and action events. The absence of an Age X Repetition Effect interaction was ascribed to the strength nature of the repetition manipulation. The age effects in the recall of the long lists were attributed to possible deficits in retrieval proficiency.

Subjects required to predict, at study, which list items they will recall on a subsequent free recall test are able to do so with some degree of accuracy for words, but not for subject-performed tasks (SPTs). In this study, subjects were given an immediate recall test on three lists, followed by a final free recall test. Words recalled on the first test tended to be recalled more often on the final test when the initial prediction ratings had been high (recall expected) rather than low; for SPTs, there was no difference in the final recall frequencies of high-and low-rated initially recalled items. The results are discussed in the context of different types of metamemory failure.

No abstract