Age differences in the retrieval of information from semantic memory.

An experiment was conducted to determine the speed with which old and young individuals could either generate an example of a category or decide if two words were related. In one condition, generation and decision trials were blocked together, while in the other condition trials were mixed randomly. No interactions between age and the mixed/blocked variable were observed in the decision task. However, in the generation task young individuals showed differentially lower reaction times in the blocked trials condition. It was argued that the differences between the performance of the two age groups reflected age differences in the utilization of automatic and effortful processing strategies. A second experiment was performed to examine the activation of semantic memory in an automatized processing task. While there was an overall age decrement in reaction time, the amount of facilitation in the retrieval processes was equal for both age groups.