Golomb et al.’s detailed analyses of order demonstrated that older adults have greater difficulty utilizing temporal context information and, furthermore, that older adults may try to rely on semantic information even when it is not helpful. One specific example of this was that the contiguity effect differed by age in free recall, younger adults tended to recall items together when these items had been originally presented together. Follow-up analyses examining the positions of the recalled items, relative to other items in the lists, revealed that older adults were less able to utilize order information. They found that older adults ( M = 73 years) showed greater declines in serial recall performance than the younger adults ( M = 20 years). study, younger and older adults’ free and serial recall of uncategorized word lists was examined. Very little research exists examining output serial order information in older adults (e.g., Golomb, Peelle, Addis, Kahana, & Wingfield, 2008 Maylor et al., 1999), and even less research exists investigating this important component of memory functioning in the oldest–old. Examining serial position curves in recall can provide additional information about strategic processes that participants may engage in during a task. Researchers examine the performance on each individual item within a list in a memory span task to look for trademark patterns of primacy (improved performance at the beginning of a list) and recency (improved performance at the end of a list). In the present study, we continued in this line of research by conducting an in-depth investigation of adult age differences in three measures of memory span, and extended previous research by including a large number of participants who fall into the age category of oldest–old (90 + years of age).Īdditionally, the use of serial position information has been central in the development of current theoretical views of working memory (Baddeley, 2007). Given the importance of WM to cognitive functioning, age-related differences have been investigated to improve our understanding of the causes of decline in WM performance (Craik & Bialystock, 2006 Dobbs & Rule, 1989). For example, the link between WM and reading comprehension is well-established (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980), as is the relationship of WM and general fluid intelligence (Gray, Chabris, & Braver, 2003 Salthouse & Pink, 2008). A number of important cognitive functions have been linked to WM processes. WM is considered an active portion of the memory system it is “a temporary storage system under attentional control that underpins our capacity for complex thought” (Baddeley, 2007, p. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the role of working memory (WM) as a critical component of adult cognition (Babcock & Salthouse, 1990 Bopp & Verhaeghen, 2005). Implications of these findings for understanding strategic processing abilities in late life are discussed. Correlation analyses indicated the strongest negative correlation with age occurred with the size judgment span task. Participants’ recall patterns in the size judgment span task revealed that the two oldest groups of adults showed the largest decreases in recall performance across output serial positions, but did not differ significantly from each other. To test this hypothesis, we examined output serial position curves of recall data from three span tasks: forward and backward digit span and size judgment span. Previous research suggests that measures of working memory are more sensitive to age effects than are simple tests of short-term memory Bopp and Verhaeghen (Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences 60:223–233, 2005), Myerson, Emery, White, and Hale, (Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition 10:20–27, 2003). In the present study, we examined adult age differences in short-term and working memory performance in middle-aged (45–64 years), young–old (65–74 years), old–old (75–89 years), and oldest–old adults (90 years and over) in the Louisiana Healthy Aging Study.
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