Age effects on analogy-based memory for text

We examined age influences on analogy-based learning, in particular, analogy-based text memory. Adults (20-72 years) read pairs of passages describing analogous topics. We manipulated encoding complexity for the first passage and superficial topic similarity between passages, and assessed second-passage memory. Across all age groups, memory was better in the superficially similar topic condition only when encoding complexity had been simple. More critically, performance was better for similar topics only for the youngest adults. Younger adults performed worse than older adults in the dissimilar condition. Thus, only older adults identified and used the parallels between passages spontaneously.