THE EFFECT OF VERBAL ELABORATIONS ON MEMORY IN YOUNG AND OLDER ADULTS

The Stein paradigm was used to examine the circumstances under which v erbal elaborations enhance memory in young and older adults. Subjects studied target adjectives that were embedded in one of three sentence contexts that varied in elaboration of the subject-adjective relations hip: (1) nonelaborated base sentences; (2) base sentences with semanti cally consistent, but arbitrary verbal, elaborations; and (3) base sen tences with explanatory verbal elaborations that clarified the signifi cance of the subject-adjective relationship. The presence of the elabo rations was varied at encoding and retrieval, and cued recall of the t arget adjectives was tested with incidental and intentional learning p rocedures. In Experiments 1A and 1B, explanatory elaborations at encod ing and retrieval yielded the largest memorial facilitation for both y oung and older adults, and the benefit was comparable for the incident al and intentional learning measures. In Experiment 2, age-related dif ferences in recall were minimal with explanatory elaborations at encod ing and retrieval, but larger age differences occurred in the nonelabo rated comparison conditions. In Experiment 3, explanatory elaborations present at encoding but not at retrieval enhanced recall when the ori ginal Stein stimuli were used, but not with the present stimuli. The i mplications of these results with regard to the mnemonic efficacy of v erbal elaborations for young and older adults are discussed.