Perceptual elaboration and memory in older adults

This experiment investigated the effects of perceptual elaboration on the memory performance of 15 older (M = 70.4 years) and 15 younger adults (M = 25.2 years). Participants were presented tachistoscopically with line drawings that varied in contour completeness. As predicted, both old and young persons' identification response times for those drawings increased with decreases in contour completeness, indicating increased elaborative processing (Kunen et al., 1979). Moreover, a moderate decrease in contour completeness was associated with increased recall of the drawings for both age groups, although older persons identified the drawings more slowly and recalled fewer drawings than did younger persons. These findings complement those of Park et al. (1986) and demonstrate that older persons engage in active cognitive elaboration of pictorial stimuli when those stimuli are presented in such a way as to encourage elaboration.