The influence of age on memory for distinctive events.
We examined whether memory for distinctive events is influenced by aging. To do so, we used a semantic isolation paradigm in which people show superior memory for a word when it is presented in a list of items from a different semantic category (e.g., the word table is presented in a list of all bird exemplars) as compared with when the same word (table) is presented in a list of unrelated words. Results showed that both younger and older adults demonstrated an isolation effect in memory, although older adults showed a numerically smaller isolation effect than did younger adults. Results suggest that in contrast with previous findings (Cimbalo & Brink, 1982), older adults can take advantage of this type of distinctiveness to aid memory performance.
Geraci
Lisa
L
Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA. lgeraci@tamu.edu
McDaniel
Mark A
MA
Manzano
Isabel
I
Roediger
Henry L
HL
D000293:Adolescent; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012660:Semantics; D014706:Verbal Learning; D055815:Young Adult