Aging and feature-specific priming of familiar and novel stimuli.
English and Turkish words in 2 fonts were presented to young and elderly Ss, and memory was assessed directly with recognition tests and indirectly with reading time. Young and elderly Ss showed repetition priming on English words and showed larger priming effects when the study and test fonts were the same rather than different. Elderly Ss were impaired, however, on recognition of feature-specific information in comparison with young Ss. When Turkish words were shown, only young Ss evidenced priming, despite recognition performance above chance for both young and elderly Ss. A 2nd experiment replicated these findings with different materials.
Wiggs
C L
CL
Laboratory of Clinical Science, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892.
Martin
A
A
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading