Effects of changes in schematic support and of item repetition on age-related associative memory deficits: Theoretically-driven empirical attempts to reduce older adults' high false alarm rate.

Older adults seem to have a special difficulty binding components of their episodic memories to each other and retrieving these bound units. This phenomenon, known as the age-related associative memory deficit, is partially driven by high false alarm rates in the associative test. The current research examines whether 2 factors: (a) manipulations of changes of schematic support between study and test (potentially affecting recollection) and (b) item repetition (potentially affecting item familiarity) might decrease older adults' false alarm rate, thereby resulting in a smaller associative memory deficit.

Older adults do not notice their names: a new twist to a classic attention task.

Although working memory spans are, on average, lower for older adults than young adults, we demonstrate in 5 experiments a way in which older adults paradoxically resemble higher capacity young adults. Specifically, in a selective-listening task, older adults almost always failed to notice their names presented in an unattended channel. This is an exaggeration of what high-span young adults show and the opposite of what low-span young adults show.

Does working memory change with age? The interactions of concurrent articulation with the effects of word length and acoustic confusion.

The effects of acoustic confusion (phonological similarity), word length, and concurrent articulation (articulatory suppression) are cited as support for Working Memory's phonological loop component (e.g., Baddeley, 2000 , Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 7, 544).