Adult age effects of plausibility on memory: The role of time constraints during encoding.

Abstract

We investigated the role of training-induced knowledge schemas and encoding time on adult age differences in recall. High-plausible (schema coherent) words were recalled better than lowplausible (schema discrepant) words in both age groups. This difference was larger for old adults than for young adults for presentation times ranging from 3 s to lls per word. After equating participants in overall recall (i.e., at 50% correct) by dynamic adjustment of presentation time, old adults again showed a stronger plausibility effect than young adults when recall was above criterion. In a second experiment with self-paced encoding, old adults used more time than young adults only for low-plausible pairs, yet they still remembered fewer of them. In a third experiment, both age groups preferred to imagine high-rather than low-plausible words, but this effect was more pronounced in old adults. The results indicate that, compared with young adults, old adults find it particularly difficult to form elaborative mental images of schema-discrepant information under a wide variety of time constraints during encoding. Results are discussed in relation to explanations based on age-related mental slowing.

Disconfirmation of Person Expectations by Older and Younger Adults: Implications for Social Vigilance

“…The analysis revealed a main effect for age group, F (1,51) ϭ 17.06, p Ͻ .0001. This effect indicated that older adults ( M ϭ 13,164 s) took longer to read through the behavioral information than the younger adults did ( M ϭ 9,446 s), consistent with other research findings (Balota & Duchek, 1989;Thompson & Kliegl, 1991). There was also an interaction of Expectancy ϫ Behavior Type, F (1,51) ϭ 54.12, p Ͻ .0001.…”

Aging and illusory correlation in judgments of co-occurrence.

“…These findings are consistent with prior research showing that aging is associated with increased dependence on schematic knowledge. Specifically, although age differences in memory for schema-consistent information are minimal, older adults' memory for information that is irrelevant or inconsistent with existing schemata is often poorer than that of younger adults (e.g., Hess, 1985;Hess & Slaughter, 1990;Hess & Tate, 1991;Hess et al, 1989;Thompson & Kliegl, 1991). Hess (1990) has outlined possible sources for this difference in performance: Both younger and older adults experience little difficulty in encoding schema-consistent information in terms of existing schematic knowledge, but the integration of schema-inconsistent information into an existing schema becomes less efficient with increasing age; existing schemata facilitate retrieval of schemarelevant information, whereas direct retrieval of schema-irrelevant information requires considerable effort.…”

Prospective memory reminders: A laboratory investigation of initiation source and age effects

“…There is a considerable literature documenting age effects (and, specifically, deficits) in both the depth and elaboration of processing at encoding (Simon, 1979). Accordingly, studies have shown that encoding time must be relatively increased for older adults in order to equate free recall between young and older adults (Thompson & Kliegl, 1991). In the present study, no information on latency to study each of the PM tasks was available.…”