Activity duration and adult age differences in memory for activity performance

Young and elderly subjects performed a series of activities that varied in the duration of their performances (45 s, 90 s, and 180 s). Duration was found to have a negligible effect on the subsequent recall of the activities and on the magnitude of the age deficit in recall. Operationalization of the program for performing an activity seems essential for establishing a memory trace of that activity's performance, but the duration of performing that activity seems to yield no further enhancement of that trace.