Word frequency influences on the list length effect and associative memory in young and older adults

Abstract

Many studies show that age deficits in memory are smaller for information supported by pre-experimental experience. Many studies also find dissociations in memory tasks between words that occur with high and low frequencies in language, but the literature is mixed regarding the extent of word frequency effects in normal ageing. We examined whether age deficits in episodic memory could be influenced by manipulations of word frequency. In Experiment 1, young and older adults studied short and long lists of high- and low-frequency words for free recall. The list length effect (the drop in proportion recalled for longer lists) was larger in young compared to older adults and for high- compared to low-frequency words. In Experiment 2, young and older adults completed item and associative recognition memory tests with high- and low-frequency words. Age deficits were greater for associative memory than for item memory, demonstrating an age-related associative deficit. High-frequency words led to better associative memory performance whilst low-frequency words resulted in better item memory performance. In neither experiment was there any evidence for age deficits to be smaller for high- relative to low-frequency words, suggesting that word frequency effects on memory operate independently from effects due to cognitive ageing.

The visual and semantic features that predict object memory: Concept property norms for 1,000 object images

“…In addition to these semantic predictors, COCA frequency and name agreement also predicted memory. COCA frequency of a concept positively predicted both lexical HRs and FARs, (HRs: β = 0.008, t = 1.93, p = 0.05; FAR: β = 0.02, t = 3.72, p = 0.0002), in keeping with the notion that highfrequency items are more likely to be endorsed as "old" (Badham et al, 2017); no effect of Frequency was seen for visual memory. Name agreement was predictive of memory in the visual memory task (HRs: β = 0.06, t = 3.76, p = 0.0002; FAR: β = 0.03, t = 2.03, p = 0.04) and the lexical memory task (HR: β = 0.12, t = 7.99, p < 0.00001; FAR: β = 0.04, t = 2.87, p = 0.004).…”

Should I keep studying? Consequences of a decision to stop learning in young and older adults.

“…(This contrasts with output-bound accuracy, which can measure the correctness of memory report; see the Supplementary Materials.) Others, however, have also reported absolute recall in list-length experiments (e.g., Badham et al, 2017;Ward, 2002) and found that the number of correctly recalled items increases as list-length increases. We focused here on the number of correctly recalled words, not the proportion, for two reasons.…”

Light verb production in healthy ageing and dementia

“…Conversely, there is evidence that low frequency words improve retrieval on certain task. Badham et al (2017) investigated low and high frequency words in an itembased and associative-recognition memory test in younger and older adults. The researchers found that both groups remembered more high frequency words on the associative test and more low frequency words on the itembased test.…”