Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, Vol 50, Issue 3 P162-P170, Copyright © 1995 by The Gerontological Society of America
Adult age differences in perceptually based, but not conceptually based implicit tests of memory
BJ Small, DF Hultsch and ME Masson
Department of Psychology, University of Victoria.
Implicit tests of memory assess the influence of recent experience without
requiring awareness of remembering. Evidence concerning age differences on
implicit tests of memory suggests small age differences in favor of younger
adults. However, the majority of research examining this issue has relied
upon perceptually based implicit tests. Recently, a second type of implicit
test, one that relies upon conceptually based processes, has been
identified. The pattern of age differences on this second type of implicit
test is less clear. In the present study, we examined the pattern of age
differences on one conceptually based (fact completion) and one
perceptually based (stem completion) implicit test of memory, as well as
two explicit tests of memory (fact and word recall). Tasks were
administered to 403 adults from three age groups (19-34 years, 58-73 years,
74-89 years). Significant age differences in favor of the young were found
on stem completion but not fact completion. Age differences were present
for both word and fast recall. Correlational analyses examining the
relationship of memory performance to other cognitive variables indicated
that the implicit tests were supported by different components than the
explicit tests, as well as being different from each other.
