Age, affect, and memory for pictorial story sequences

Sixteen young (19.1 mean years), 16 middle-aged (39.4 mean years), and 16 older women (71.1 mean years) were presented with simple stories in an eight-frame pictorial format. The stories contained no verbal information and were designed to have emotional or neutral affective content. Immediate and delayed (72 hours later) recall were measured in terms of response to specific questions (structured recall) and total number of written propositions (free recall). Recall of affective content was greater for both structured and free recall conditions for all age groups. The superior recall of affective as compared to neutral material became more important with delay although the elderly did not differentially benefit from this relationship. The primary conclusion drawn was that affective content has similar effects on recall at all ages.