Age and individual differences in working memory: the size judgment span task.

The authors introduced the Size Judgment Span (SJS) task, a working memory measure developed for use with persons of varied educational backgrounds and general intellectual ability. The authors pooled data from 5 published articles where the SJS task and other measures of cognitive performance were administered to create an archival data set with 496 participants. Analyses of these data yielded strong evidence of age and individual ability differences in SJS performance, confirming the sensitivity of this task for empirically distinguishing age and ability groups.

Effects of age and ability on self-reported memory functioning and knowledge of memory aging.

The authors examined the effects of age and ability (as measured by education and verbal ability) on self-reported memory functioning in adulthood. In Study 1, the age and ability groups responded similarly to the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (D. E.

Practical memory concerns in adulthood.

In this article, we focus on practical memory concerns in adulthood. Young, middle-aged, and community-dwelling older adults responded to seven open-ended questions covering the topics of memory self-efficacy, memory management, memory remediation, and fears about memory aging in adulthood. The results revealed several similarities among the age groups.

Pictorial illustrations enhance memory for sentences in younger and older adults.

In these studies, the authors examined the effects of verbal and pictorial illustrations on younger and older adults' recall of the content of short sentences. During acquisition, base and elaborated sentences were presented under one of three encoding conditions: (a) sentences only; (b) sentences with matching pictures; (c) incomplete sentences with matching pictures. At test, participants recalled the main action of the sentences.

Do adults with mental retardation show pictorial superiority effects in recall and recognition?

We examined memory for pictures and words in adults with mental retardation and a control group of adults of normal intelligence. During acquisition, sets of simple line drawings and matching words were presented for study using an intentional learning procedure. The principle dependent measures were free recall and recognition.