Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, Vol 53, Issue 2 P112-P121, Copyright © 1998 by The Gerontological Society of America
Associative learning and short-term forgetting as a function of age, perceptual speed, and central executive functioning
JE Fisk and PB Warr
Psychology Unit, Edge Hill University College. fiskj@admin.ehche.ac.uk
In a study of two components of associative learning, it was found that
during acquisition older people were more likely to forget material on
which they were previously correct, but only for associations which were
not well learned. Older people also formed fewer correct associations in
the course of the task. Differences in learners' perceptual speed were
found to account for some of the age deficit in the number of learning
attempts, but speed was less relevant in accounting for age differences in
forgetting and in the ability to generate new responses. Measured central
executive functioning was less important in accounting for age differences
on all measures. It is argued that forgetting is less important as a source
of learning performance than has been suggested elsewhere (e.g., Salthouse,
1994). Rather, it is the inability of older persons to form associations as
rapidly as younger ones which accounts for most of the age effect.
