Frequency judgments and correlated cognitive abilities in young and elderly adults

The present study replicated and extended the results obtained earlier by Attig and Hasher (1980) in finding null effects for adult age variation and instructional variation on a relative frequency judgment task. In addition, nonsignificant covariation was found for both young and elderly adults bet ween frequency judgment proficiency and paired-associate learning proficiency, in agreement with the hypothesis that frequency judgment is mediated fully by automatic memory processes over the entire adult lifespan. Fluid intelligence test scores were also found to correlate positively with frequency judgment proficiency for young adults but not for elderly adults.