Age differences in learning and memory on a digit-symbol substitution task

Fifteen young (18 to 28 years) and fifteen old (65 to 75 years) persons were given ten 30-second trials on a modified Digit-Symbol task. Both immediate and delayed (24-hour) recall and recognition measures were used to determine how well they remembered the digit-symbol pairs. Both age groups showed similar, significantly improvement over the 10 trials, although the performance level of the young group was higher throughout. The young group showed significantly higher recall and recognition (both immediate and delayed) for the digit-symbol pairs and were more likely to report the use of mnemonic techniques in learning the pairs.