PASSAGE DIFFICULTY, SPEECH RATE, AND AGE-DIFFERENCES IN MEMORY FOR SPOKEN TEXT - SPEECH RECALL AND THE COMPLEXITY HYPOTHESIS

Memory for speech in young and elderly adults was studied by varying s peech rate and average predictability of prose passages (measured by a ''cloze '' procedure). Increased speech rate and decreased predictabi lity yielded poorer memory performance on three retention measures (fr ee recall, cued recall, and multiple-choice recognition), confirming p assage predictability as a good predictor of empirical difficulty of a speech passage. Older adults recalled less than young adults on all t hree measures, with increasing speech rates producing special difficul ty for the elderly subjects relative to the young. Although there was a suggestion that elderly subjects were less able to take advantage of passage predictability than the young in recall of very rapid speech, neither age group showed an interaction between passage predictabilit y and speech rate. Results are discussed in terms of a simple extensio n of the complexity hypothesis to speech recall.