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Updated: Jun 3, 2026

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment
Published on: June 25, 2019
Age-related associative deficits are absent with nonwords
Stephen P Badham1, Elizabeth A Maylor
1Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry,CV4 7AL, UK. S.P.Badham@warwick.ac.uk
Abstract:
Words and nonwords were used as stimuli to assess item and associative recognition memory performance in young and older adults. Participants were presented with pairs of items and then tested on both item memory (old/new items) and associative memory (intact/recombined pairs). For words, older participants performed worse than young participants on item and associative tests but to a greater extent on the latter. In contrast, for nonwords, older participants performed equally worse than young participants on item and associative tests. This is the first study to demonstrate that a manipulation of stimulus novelty can alter age-related associative deficits.
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