Does repetition engender the same retrieval processes in young and older adults?

Abstract

Aging differentially affects retrieval processes underlying recognition memory: familiarity is maintained, whereas recollection declines. We determined whether word repetition across two study-test phases enhanced older adults' use of recollection. During Test 1, frontal episodic memory effects, suggestive of familiarity-based processes, were age invariant, whereas only the young showed a parietal episodic memory effect, suggestive of recollection. Repetition did not modulate the frontal episodic memory effect in either group, but increased the parietal episodic memory effect in the young. Importantly, older adults showed a parietal episodic memory effect at Test 2, suggesting that repetition did enable recollection. Only older adults, however, showed a left frontal negativity, implying that they may have used additional processes to recover episodic memories.