Comments on Winn and Elias: testing the rehearsal deficit hypothesis

Winn and Elias, [Experimental Aging Research, 1977, 3 (4)], recently tested a version of the rehearsal deficit hypothesis in which elderly adults are viewed as being less likely to rehearse spontaneously than are young adults. Since their results failed to support this variant of the deficit hypothesis, Winn and Elias concluded that elderly adults do not manifest a rehearsal deficit. The present position is that Winn and Elias's version of the deficit hypothesis is an untenable one. Their results actually supported an alternative version of the hypothesis that identifies deficit in terms of elaborative or mediational rehearsal.