Differences in Brown-Peterson recall as function of age and retention interval.

Retention of old (n = 27; M age = 72.4 years) and young (n = 46; age = 20.5 years) adults was compared in a Brown-Peterson task. Participants were instructed to recall letters after either reading digit pairs or summing each pair of digits and reporting the sum as old or even. Old adults recalled a substantially smaller proportion of letters correctly than did the young adults, and the magnitude of the difference between groups was related positively to the length of the retention interval. The main effect of age and the age by retention interval interaction were significant with both serial and free recall scoring criteria. In a multiple regression analysis with letter span, age and interpolated task regressed on Brown-Peterson recall, letter span, and interpolated task accounted for most of the variance in performance.