Abstract
This study investigated age-related differences in working memory using a modified version of the Daneman and Carpenter (1980) working memory task. The subjects were required to verify a series of sentences, and then at the end of each series recall the final word of each sentence. Each series varied in length from one to five sentences. Performance on this task was compared with performance in a word-alone condition, in which the subject had to remember an equivalent list of single words but without sentence verification. When sentences of positive grammatical form were used in the sentence-span condition, age differences were no greater than in the word alone condition; however, the age decrement increased when sentences of negative grammatical form were used. There were no interactions between age and pacing or between age and the number of sentences in each set. These results are discussed in relation to theories of age differences in working memory.
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The present research was supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada awarded to F. I M. Craik.
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Gick, M.L., Craik, F.I.M. & Morris, R.G. Task complexity and age differences in working memory. Memory & Cognition 16, 353–361 (1988). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197046
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197046