Adult age-group differences in recall for the literal and interpretive meanings of narrative text

This study examined age differences in recall for the literal and interpretive meanings of narrative text. Following presentation of one of two stories rich in both literal and interpretive content, younger (mean age = 19.2 years) and older (mean age = 72.2 years) adults were asked to retell and to interpret the story. Response task order was counterbalanced across participants. When asked to retell a story as close to the original as possible, the younger adults recalled more of the literal propositional content than did the older adults in the retell-first, although not in the interpret-first, condition. In addition, both older and younger adults recalled more of the main ideas (gist) relative to the details. When asked to interpret the same story, more older than younger adults produced deep and synthetic representations of the story's interpretive meanings. In addition, there was a clear preference among the older age group for deep-synthetic responding. Although more younger than older adults produced analytic interpretations, within the younger group there was no clear preference for either an analytic or a deep-synthetic style.