The effects of aging on selectivity and control in short-term recall

The ability to control encoding and retrieval processing strategically is critical for the efficient use of memory. We examined the ability of younger and older adults to selectively remember words on the basis of their arbitrary point values by using a technique developed by Watkins and Bloom (1999). In the first three experiments, younger subjects recalled more words than did older subjects, but an independent index of recall selectivity showed that older subjects were apparently more successful in selecting higher valued words. However, a fourth experiment showed that this superior selectivity on the part of older adults was attributable to their greater proportional reliance on primary memory recall. Overall, the data suggest that although older adults recall fewer words than do younger adults, they exert as much control over some aspects of encoding.