Adult age differences in the use of temporal and semantic context in dual-list free recall

Healthy older adults experience episodic memory deficits when temporal context reinstatement is required, but they also have preserved semantic memory. Semantic associations can therefore support or impair older adults' retrieval from a specific temporal context. The present experiment characterized the roles of pre- and postretrieval processing in age-related memory differences when semantic and temporal contexts worked together or in opposition. Participants studied 2 lists of exemplars from either the same category or different categories and recalled from one list. During recall, participants reported all words that came to mind and made source monitoring judgments. Both groups initiated first retrievals similarly from primacy positions on delayed tests, but older adults initiated first retrievals from later recency positions on immediate tests. Older adults took longer on average to initiate subsequent retrievals, especially when recalling from List 1 and when exemplars from the same category appeared in both lists. Further, trial-level analyses showed that retrieval latencies were longer when fewer responses were produced, and older adults produced fewer responses. When response production was equated, retrieval latencies were more comparable for both age groups. Finally, when lists included exemplars from the same category, older adults produced intrusions earlier and monitored them less effectively on immediate tests, but both age groups showed near-perfect intrusion monitoring when lists included exemplars from different categories. Collectively, these findings show that both pre- and postretrieval processing contributed to age-related recall differences when semantic associations facilitated or opposed reinstatement and monitoring of temporal context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).