Discriminating semantic from episodic relatedness in young and older adults.

Full Abstract

The ability of young (aged 18-30) and older (aged 60-80) adults to discriminate pre-experimental (semantic) from experimental (episodic) associations was examined. Participants studied a list containing semantically related and unrelated word pairs and then made either associative recognition (Experiments 1a and b) or semantic relatedness (Experiment 2) judgments at various response deadlines. For associative recognition judgments, both young and older adults benefited from semantic relatedness, leading to more hits for related than unrelated pairs, and at the long response deadline, older adults' performance on those pairs matched that of young participants. Also, both young and older adults demonstrated superior discrimination for unrelated lures whose members had originally been studied in related pairs - evidence for recall-to-reject processing in both age groups. In making semantic relatedness judgments, both young and older adults showed an episodic priming effect. When older adults can rely on long-standing associations, their performance resembles that of young adults - both in associative recognition and in episodic priming.

Author information

Author/s: Patterson, Meredith M (MM); Light, Leah L (LL); Van Ocker, Jeffrey C (JC); Olfman, Darlene (D);

Affiliation: Psychology Department, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, USA. mmpatterson(-atsign-)salisbury.edu

Grants: AG 02452 (Agency:NIA NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

Journal: Neuropsychology, development, and cognition. Section B, Aging, neuropsychology and cognition (Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-Sep; vol 16 (issue 5) : pp 535-62

Dates: Created 2009/09/03; Completed 2009/10/29;

PMID: 19590991, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 10/29/2009, IMS Date: )

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