Adult age differences in the use of story structure in delayed free recall

Age differences in learning from text: The effects of content preexposure on reading

This study investigated age differences in the way in which attentional resources are allocated to expository text and whether these differences are moderated by content preexposure. The organization of the preexposure materials was manipulated to test the hypothesis that a change in organization across two presentations would evoke more processing effort (i.e., a “mismatch effect”). After preexposure, reading time was measured as younger and older adults read a target text to produce recall, answer comprehension questions, and solve a novel problem. Relative to the young, older readers allocated more time as they encountered new discourse entities and showed a stronger serial position effect, which are patterns of resource allocation that suggest more extensive processing of the discourse situation. Younger adults took advantage of repeated exposure to produce more extensive reproduction of text content, as well as more text-specific solutions to solve a problem. Older adults generated more elaborated inferences and were similar to young adults in terms of the dimensional complexity of problem solutions. Whereas younger readers showed weak evidence for a mismatch effect, older readers did not. These data are consistent with the proposal that older readers favor the situation model over textbase content in allocating resources to text, but this effect was not enhanced by introducing organizational difficulty in reprocessing.

Understanding How Prior Knowledge Influences Memory in Older Adults

Older adults have a harder time than younger adults remembering specific events and experiences (episodic memory), whereas the ability to use one's general knowledge either improves or remains stable over the life span. Our focus is on the sometimes overlooked but critical possibility that this intact general knowledge can facilitate older adults' episodic memory performance. After reviewing literature that shows how prior knowledge can support remembering in aging as well as lead it astray, we consider open questions including whether prior knowledge is used only to fill in the gaps after a memory failure and when older adults might need to be instructed to apply their prior knowledge. Overall, we situate our claims within theories of cognitive aging, arguing that prior knowledge is a key factor in understanding older adults' memory performance, with the potential to serve as a compensatory mechanism.

Preoperative prediction of verbal episodic memory outcome using FMRI

This article focuses on an important neurosurgical problem for which functional imaging may have a role. Temporal lobe epilepsy surgery typically involves removal of much of the anterior medial temporal lobe, which is critical for encoding and retrieval of long-term episodic memories. Verbal episodic memory decline after left anterior temporal lobe resection occurs in 30% to 60% of such patients. Recent studies show that preoperative fMRI can predict the degree of verbal memory change that will occur, and that fMRI improves prediction accuracy when combined with other routine tests. The predictive power of fMRI appears to be at least as good as the Wada memory test, making fMRI a viable noninvasive alternative to the Wada for preoperative assessment.

Environmental support: an integrative framework

OBJECTIVE

In this qualitative review, we develop an integrative framework to bring coherence to the concept of environmental support (ES) in the fields of human factors and cognitive aging.

BACKGROUND

The ES hypothesis, originally formulated to explain effects of retrieval support on age-related differences in memory by reducing need for self-initiated processing, has been applied to many domains, such that the concept now encompasses many manipulations and measures. We developed a framework in which different types of ES share a common function (external support of performance) but differ in how this function is accomplished. ES improves performance by reducing task demands on mental resources or promoting effective use of resources. Previous reviews show that ES can decrease age-related differences in performance (more benefit for older adults), provide equal benefit, or increase differences (more benefit for younger adults). We proposed that the outcome will depend on properties of the ES, task, and person.

METHOD

We applied our framework to the domains of language comprehension and human-computer interaction, selecting studies representative of differing outcomes for ES.

RESULTS

In both domains, we found that outcomes depended on ES, task, and person. Age differences were more likely to be reduced by ES that imposed minimal prerequisites for use and targeted processes that needed support.

CONCLUSION

Our review helps refine the ES concept by identifying conditions under which age differences in performance are reduced or magnified by ES.

APPLICATIONS

The framework provides guidance for human factors practitioners to design tasks and environments for older adults.

Spontaneous Production and Use of Mnemonic Strategies in Older Adults

Mnemonic strategy use in older adults has been measured a number of ways, and although strategy measurement has received considerable attention, little work has been done to compare various types of subjective strategy reporting. The authors compared self-generated and endorsed strategies for memory tasks in a sample of 85 African-American and Caucasian older adults and investigated demographic characteristics related to each strategy measurement and the relationship between strategy use and memory performance. Across memory measures, significantly more strategies were endorsed than self-generated. Race, favoring Caucasians, was the most salient demographic predictor of mnemonic strategy usage. Although strategic behavior was associated with ability performance on most memory measures, specific strategies for optimal performance were identified for number and story recall only. Findings highlight the importance of measuring both self-generated and endorsed strategies and confirm previous work on the relationship between strategy use and memory performance.

Recall and subjective reactions to speaking styles: does age matter?

Eighty-four younger adults (M = 20.9 years), and 70 older adults (M = 71.1 years) watched a videotaped presentation of medication instructions presented in either neutral speech or elderspeak. Older adults, particularly those with higher working memory performance, tended to recall more information from the elderspeak version. Younger and older adults agreed in rating the elderspeak as having both positive and negative characteristics. Findings supported our hypothesis that the relationship between recall performance and positive subjective reactions to speaking styles would be stronger for older adults than for younger adults.

Situation models and aging

Younger and older adults were tested for their ability to process and retrieve information from texts. The authors focused on the construction and retrieval of situation models relative to other types of text representations. The results showed that during memory retrieval, younger adults showed superior memory for surface form and textbase knowledge (what the text was), whereas older adults had equivalent or superior memory for situation model information (what the text was about). The results also showed that during reading, older and younger adults were similar in their sensitivity to various aspects of the texts. Overall, these findings suggest that although there are age-related declines in the processing and memory for text-based information, for higher level representations, these abilities appear to be preserved. Several possibilities for why this is the case are discussed, including an in-depth consideration of one possibility that involves W. Kintsch's (1988) construction-integration model.

Patterns of resource allocation are reliable among younger and older readers

Younger and older adults read short expository passages across 2 times of measurement for subsequent comprehension or recall. Regression analysis was used to decompose word-by-word reading times into resources allocated to word- and textbase-level processes. Readers were more sensitive to these demands when reading for recall than when reading for comprehension. Patterns of resource allocation showed good test-retest reliabilities and were predictive of memory performance. Within age group, resource allocation parameters were not systematically correlated with other individual-difference measures, suggesting that strategies of on-line resource allocation may be a unique source of individual differences in determining comprehension of and memory for text. Age differences in allocation patterns appeared to reflect general slowing among the older adults. Because older adults showed equivalent memory performance to that of younger readers, the reading time data may represent the on-line resource allocation needed for comparable outcomes among older and younger readers.

Medication instruction design: younger and older adult schemas for taking medication

We examined whether older and younger adults share a schema for taking medication and whether instructions are better recalled when they are organized to match this schema. Experiment 1 examined age difference in schema organization. Participants sorted medication items (e.g., purpose, dose, possible side effects) according to similarity and then ordered the items to create a preferred instruction set. Cluster analysis of the sort and order data showed that younger and older adults share a schema for taking medication. Secondary regression analyses found that verbal ability (i.e., vocabulary scores) predicted individual differences in schema organization. In Experiment 2 participants recalled instructions that were either compatible with this schema in terms of grouping and order of items or were presented in nonpreferred orders. Younger participants remembered more information than did older participants, but both age groups better remembered and preferred the more schema-compatible instructions. Secondary analyses showed that recall was also positively related to verbal ability. Along with our earlier research, this study suggests that older and younger adults possess a schema for taking medication and that instructions that are compatible with this schema provide an environmental support that improves memory for medication information.

Levels upon levels: predicting age differences in text recall

Younger and older adults read and recalled narrative and expository prose passages of varying propositional density. Age differences in recall were smaller when text units were from higher levels in a coherence graph and when the young and elderly groups compared were higher in verbal ability. The extent to which age differences were moderated by these factors varied, however, as a function of text characteristics. These results reinforce the position that the extent of age differences in text recall depends on both text and reader characteristics.

Older and younger adults' memory for structured and unstructured events

Because the everyday memory demands of older adults often tend to be event-based, a complete view of memory functioning should include assessments of event memory. To this end 48 older and younger adults were asked to participate in one of two hierarchically structured events. They were tested for their memory immediately afterwards and again a week later. The procedural event was composed of a series of actions logically related and ordered in a necessary sequence to accomplish a goal. In contrast, the temporal event was organized with respect to locations and objects within those locations, but no logically necessary relationship or order existed among them. The results indicated that older and younger adults differed less in their recall of statements which summarized the event than in their recall of the actions composing the event. Both young and old benefited by the greater organization inherent in the procedural event but there was some tendency for younger adults to use this information more effectively. Thus, even memory for event-based information is susceptible to age-related decline but this effect appears to be influenced by the structural characteristics of an event.

Syntactic complexity and elderly adults' prose recall

Elderly adults in their 70s and 80s and middle-aged adults in their 40s and 50s recalled a series of paragraphs made up of single-clause sentences and sentences with right-branching or left-branching embedded or subordinate clauses. Overall, the middle-aged adults recalled 65% of the propositions regardless of syntactic form. While the elderly adults recalled 43% of the propositions from the single-clause sentences, they recalled 60% of the propositions from the right-branching clauses but only 22% of the propositions from the left-branching clauses. These results, in conjunction with prior research on elderly adults' production and imitation of complex syntactic constructions, demonstrate age-related changes in syntactic processing.

Adult age differences in recall of a moral dilemma under intentional, incidental and dual task instructions

Age changes in memory discourse were examined under conditions where participants were asked to listen to a passage about a moral dilemma: (a) for later recall of main ideas and details (Intentional Recall); (b) to propose solutions for it (Incidental Recall), or (c) to do both (Dual Task). Sixty young (19-32 years) and 60 old (60-76 years) adults participated, 20 of each age in each condition. Older adults gave fewer verbatim responses but more inferences, elaborations and overgeneralizations, an outcome which contrasted with earlier findings that older adults cannot process implied meanings. Verbatim recall was lower with Dual Task than with Intentional Recall instructions, suggesting that doing two tasks required more processing capacity, but there were no age x condition interactions with any measure. The results were discussed in relation to possible age decrements in processing capacity and possible age differences in interpreting the recall instructions.