Memory for topics of conversation: adult age differences and intentionality

Young adults and elderly adults received a series of topics for discussion, followed by a recall test of the topics per se and a recognition memory test of the questions asked during the conversations. Half of the participants in each age group were forewarned of the subsequent recall test (intentional memory); the remaining participants were not forewarned (incidental memory). Null effects for instructional variation were found at both age levels for all memory scores. For recall, an age difference, favoring young adults, was found. However, no age difference was found for either the recognition of old questions as old or the recognition of new questions as new. The results were interpreted in terms of an age deficit for the retrieval of memory traces established by the comprehension of conversational content.