Predictors of prose recall in adulthood and old age

One group of young adults and three groups of older adults (young-old, old, old-old) were examined in immediate recall of random and organizable words, and immediate and delayed recall of prose passages. Results showed that all groups of older adults recalled less from the prose passages and the word recall tasks than the younger adults, although there were no performance differences among the three older samples. As well, all age groups showed a similar increase in recall of organizable words compared with random words, and all age groups showed parallel forgetting curves in prose recall. These results suggest that all age groups utilized the organizational support to the same extent, and that forgetting rate was not influenced by age. Regression analyses showed that recall of random and organizable words, education, vocabulary and age all contributed to prose recall performance. Most important, the importance of markers of strategy use (word recall tasks) for prose recall decreased from early to late adulthood, whereas the importance of a semantic memory marker (vocabulary) showed the opposite pattern.