Aging and the stability of activation and sampling in cued recall

Age effects in cued recall were investigated as a function of activation and sampling of preexisting associates of the test cue. Young adults, community-dwelling elderly, and elderly patients studied lists of unrelated words and were tested with extralist cues. Preexperimental strength between test cues and studied words was manipulated to discern differences in activation, and normative size of the set of associates was manipulated to discern differences in sampling. Test delay and prior testing were also manipulated in Experiment 1. Although large age effects were found with phonemic and taxonomic test cues, young and older subjects showed comparable effects of strength and set size, suggesting that age effects were not due to activation and sampling differences. Test delay and prior testing also had comparable effects. Implications for age effects in episodic cued recall are discussed.