An Example of Age-associated Interference in Memorizing

Abstract

The study compared young and old intellectually superior individuals (mean ages 22.8 and 68.8) on Brown-Peterson memory tasks. Each trial required recall of four words following 15 seconds of backward counting, with a final recognition test for words in a 4-trial block. Each person participated in a switch and nonswitch condition of a Wickens paradigm--unchanged category membership of quadruplets for nonswitch and trial 4 change for switch. Usual recall loss from trial 2 onwards and recovery on trial 4 after a switch was found in both age groups, but significantly lower recall was shown by the old on trial 3 and also on trial 4 in the nonswitch condition. Recognition by the young was almost perfect, but the old had lower scores for words presented on trials 3 and 4 (nonswitch). All memory interference in young adults could, therefore, be attributed to retrieval difficulty, but a residual proactive deficit occurs in old adults.