M. Hartman et J. Dusek, DIRECT AND INDIRECT MEMORY TESTS - WHAT THEY REVEAL ABOUT AGE-DIFFERENCES IN INTERFERENCE, Neuropsychology, development, and cognition. Section B, Aging and cognition, 1(4), 1994, pp. 292-309
The effects of interference on memory in younger and older adults were
examined in a series of three experiments. In the study task, subject
s were presented with a series of sentences, each having both a target
, to-be-remembered ending, and a nontarget ending. Older adults showed
equal priming of targets and nontargets on an indirect memory test (E
xperiment 1), whereas younger adults showed greater priming of the tar
gets. In contrast, on direct memory tests (Experiments 2 and 3) both a
ge groups were more accurate for targets than nontargets. This pattern
of results is interpreted as evidence that age differences in interfe
rence involve selective attention mechanisms, but not elaborative rehe
arsal processes.