Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, Vol 50, Issue 5 P257-P266, Copyright © 1995 by The Gerontological Society of America
Age differences in veridical and reconstructive recall of syntactically and randomly segmented speech
A Wingfield, PA Tun and MJ Rosen
Department of Psychology, Brandeis University, USA.
Young and elderly adults listened to spoken passages that were segmented
for immediate recall either at natural syntactic boundaries (such as after
sentences or major clauses), or at random, nonsyntactic intervals. In
addition, speech rate was manipulated using time- compression of the speech
materials. Results showed that random segmentation was especially
detrimental to the elderly subjects' recall, as was the effect of
increasing speech rate. An analysis of subjects' recall errors offered
evidence for reconstruction in short- term segment recall in a manner
similar to that usually associated with long-term memory.
