MEMORY PERFORMANCE IN RELATION TO AGE, VERBAL-ABILITY, AND ACTIVITY

Young and old adults completed a vocabulary test, the Activities Frequ ency Inventory (AFI), the Activity Preference Scale (APS), and memory rests that sampled six domains of everyday memory. The young adults' m emory performance was significantly higher than the old adults'. Memor y was better for the high-APS young than for the low-APS young and for the high-AFI old than for the low-AFI old. However, the age gap in me mory performance was not closed when a subsample of active elderly was compared with a subsample of inactive young. Also, in regression anal yses, neither activity measure added significantly to the vocabulary m easure in predicting memory performance for either age group.