Age differences in the effect of encoding congruence on incidental free and cued recall

The effect of encoding congruence on incidental free and cured recall was investigated by presenting young and older adults with a list of 24 words, one from each of 24 taxonomic categories. half the subjects from each age group received a congruent orienting task, in which category questions were matched with relevant word instances; the other half from each age group received a non-congruent orienting task, in which category questions were not matched with relevant instances. The age x orienting task x memory interaction indicated that the free recall performance of the young was higher following the congruent orienting, but that of the old was no different following congruent and non-congruent orienting. On cued recall, both age groups performed at the same high level following congruent orienting. The young had a marginally higher level of cued recall than the old following non-congruent orienting. The implications of these findings for processing and production deficiency hypotheses of age-related memory differences were discussed.