GENERATION EFFECT AND FREQUENCY JUDGMENT IN YOUNG AND ELDERLY ADULTS

In Experiment 1, young and old adults both generated and read the same words either two, five, or eight times (with frequencies combined ort hogonally) and then judged the frequency of either the generated or re ad words. In Experiment 2, young and old adults generated and read dif ferent words either one, two, or three times and judged the frequency of both the generated and read words. In both experiments, generation, compared to reading, increased the slope of frequency judgments compa rably for the two age groups. In Experiment 1, neither age group could discriminate read from generated frequency. In Experiment 2, a 24-h r etention interval reduced the slope of frequency judgments, but did no t interact with either age or generation efforts. These results seem m ost consistent with a semantic activation explanation of the generatio n effect and a familiarity-based judgment about frequency of occurrenc e.