Differential memory changes with age: Exact retrieval versus plausible inference.

Abstract

Elderly and college-age subjects were compared in two experiments, one involving episodic memory and one involving semantic memory. Responses were generally slower for older subjects; however, in some conditions, older subjects were as good as or better than young subjects, even in terms of response time. The results suggest that older subjects have no difficulty with memory tasks that do not require exact memory-matches or careful inspection of retrieved propositions. It is argued that careful inspection is a much more costly process for older adults than it is for young adults, but that plausibility judgments and feature overlap processes are equally easy for both age groups. The suggestion is made that older subjects also tend to modify their performance in ways that would minimize the detrimental effects of forgetting specific facts.A salient attribute associated with increasing age, from young adulthood to retirement and beyond, is a decrement in memory performance (see Birren & Schaie, 1977;Hunt &Hertzog, 1981;Poon, Fozard, Cermak, Arenberg, & Thompson, 1980, for extensive reviews). Although there is almost universal agreement that memory performance declines with age in certain situations, there is less consensus as to the nature of the decline or the cause. Researchers have argued as to whether the deficits are primarily encoding-based, storage-based or retrieval-based, or some combination of these, and whether deficits should be thought of as a reduction in capacity, loss of processing power, loss of processing speed, or loss of mental flexibility (see Craik, 1977, Kausler, 1982, and Salthouse, 1982, for extensive reviews).Arguments have been made that the more difficult the memory task, the greater the disparity in performance between older and younger adults (e.g., Craik, 1968;Laurence, 1967). On this, there is relative consensus. It is not surprising, for example, that the disparity in performance between younger and older adults would be greater for recall than for recognition (e.g., Botwinick & Storandt, 1974;Erber, 1974;Schonfield& Robertson, 1966). Recall is less likely to suffer from ceiling effects and requires more processes than does recognition, so there are more processes or stages for an age advantage to emerge. More surprising are claims that the disparity in performance increases with more "meaningful"

The persistence of inferences in memory for younger and older adults: Remembering facts and believing inferences

“…Previous studies have also shown that when participants are asked to recall a story, younger adults' recall is often more reproductive and text based (using specific details), whereas older adults' recall is more reconstructive and interpretive (Adams, 1991;Adams, Smith, Nyquist, & Perlmutter, 1997). In fact, some have argued that there may be motivational or strategic differences between younger and older adults that could explain these different patterns of data (e.g., Perlmutter & Mitchell, 1982;Reder, Wible, & Martin, 1986). Similarly, with inference recall, it appears that older adults have a fairly good memory for inferences, whereas their recall of factual information is worse than younger adults' recall.…”

The Adaptive and Strategic Use of Memory By Older Adults: Evaluative Processing and Value-Directed Remembering

“…There is also evidence to suggest that older adults rely on more gist-based memory, which refers to a highly abstracted and semantically rich representation of the past, relative to more specific verbatim memory, which is memory for the exact sensory inputs of a given situation in the past (e.g., Reder et al, 1986). Fuzzy-trace theory (Brainerd & Reyna, 2001) suggests that with age the ability to retain verbatim information deteriorates more quickly than the ability to retain gist information (e.g., Schacter, Koutstaal, Johnson, Gross, & Angell, 1997;Titcomb & Reyna, 1995;Tun, Wingfield, Rosen, & Blanchard, 1998).…”

“…Information that is represented in a specific form can then support recollection at retrieval, resulting in a more precise grain size and highly accurate remembering. However, older adults typically draw on information from gist-based representations, which can be then supplemented with prior knowledge and inferences (see Reder, Wible, & Martin, 1986)-sometimes leading to specific and predictable memory errors that are consistent with prior knowledge. Gist-based processing typically leads to familiarity at retrieval, translating to somewhat less …”

¿Quién hizo qué? Diferencias entre adultos jóvenes y mayores en la memoria para un atraco

“…Las personas mayores son más proclives que los jóvenes a basar sus decisiones de reconocimiento en la familiaridad o plausibilidad de la información (Reder et al, 1986) y en los conocimientos previos (García-Bajos et al, en revisión; Mather et al, 1999) y, por lo tanto, esta predisposición a depender de la memoria semántica también podría estar implicada en su menor capacidad para la atribución de la fuente.…”

“…Estas dificultades podrían acentuarse en las personas mayores que, normal-mente, presentan una menor resistencia a la interferencia (Benedet, Martínez-Arias y Alejandre, 1998) y, en algunos casos, son cognitivamente menos rápidas, disponen de menos recursos atencionales y procesan la información de una forma más automática que los jóvenes (Park et al, 2002). Como resultado, por ejemplo, las personas mayores tienden a depender de la tipicidad o de la familiaridad de la información en mayor medida que los jóvenes, por lo que su probabilidad de aceptar contenidos falsos típicos es también mayor (García-Bajos, Migueles y Aizpurua, en revisión; Mather, Johnson y De Leonardis, 1999;Reder, Wible y Martin, 1986).…”