title: Age differences in the effect of encoding congruence on incidental free and cued recall.
abstract: The effect of encoding congruence on incidental free and cured recall was investigated by presenting young and older adults with a list of 24 words, one from each of 24 taxonomic categories. half the subjects from each age group received a congruent orienting task, in which category questions were matched with relevant word instances; the other half from each age group received a non-congruent orienting task, in which category questions were not matched with relevant instances. The age x orienting task x memory interaction indicated that the free recall performance of the young was higher following the congruent orienting, but that of the old was no different following congruent and non-congruent orienting. On cued recall, both age groups performed at the same high level following congruent orienting. The young had a marginally higher level of cued recall than the old following non-congruent orienting. The implications of these findings for processing and production deficiency hypotheses of age-related memory differences were discussed.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D011581:Psychological Tests