Effects of age and training on memory for pragmatic implications in advertising

Young adults (M age = 20.19 years) and old adults (M age = 67.58 years) were tested for their immediate memory of implicit and explicit information in commercial advertising. All participants read advertising passages for various fictitious products and evaluated the truthfulness of test sentences that paraphrased the critical claims pragmatically implied or directly asserted in the ad. In addition, half of the participants in each age group received individualized training in making implication-assertion discriminations. For both types of ad forms (implied, asserted), young and old adults produced an equivalent number of truth ratings, suggesting that both age groups are equally likely to interpret implied information as directly asserted fact. Analysis of the training results indicated that old as well as young adults learned to discriminate successfully between implied and asserted ad claims, although training had only a small effect on the participants' tendency to draw unwarranted inferences.