Age differences in picture memory with resemblance and discrimination tasks.

Previous research on recognition memory has examined age-related effects on knowledge of the difference between lures and input items (e.g., false alarm rate), but has not examined age-related effects on knowledge of the resemblance between lures and input items. In the present experiment, subjects in two age groups (means = 19.3 years and 63.8 years) saw a list of scenic pictures, followed by a recognition test containing same-photo items, each a copy of an input picture, same-scene items, each from the same original scene as an input picture, and different-scene items. The task was to categorize each test picture as same-photo, same-scene or different-scene. There were no reliable age differences on standard recognition measures of hits and false alarms. However, younger subjects were better than older subjects at detecting the resemblance between same-scene items and input items, although this age difference was less apparent when the initial encoding provided experience with resemblance detection. The results have implications regarding age effects in picture memory and in recognition memory generally.