Orienting tasks as moderators of narrative and expository text recall in adulthood

Incidental narrative and expository prose memory of 60 older adults (M = 72 years) and 60 younger adults (M = 24 years) was assessed following orienting tasks that emphasized either relational (sentence scrambling) or individual proposition (letter deletion) information or following a control condition. Orienting tasks were done capably, but older adults took longer and made more errors on the letter-deletion task than did younger adults. Age differences in recall were observed consistently for expository texts, but for narrative texts, age differences in recall were observed only when letters were deleted. If orienting tasks overtax older adults' processing resources or emphasize shallow information, recall gains may be minimal.