Deficits in the cognitive performance of elderly adults in comparison
to that of younger adults are well-documented. Although many researche
rs have observed that elderly adults appear to function competently in
their normal environments, few systematic studies support that claim.
As a first step toward understanding the apparent discrepancy between
laboratory and real-world performance, elderly adults completed a sel
f-report '' ''everyday memory'' questionnaire, along with measures of
health and activity. Factor-analysis procedures revealed five underlyi
ng dimensions of everyday memory; these dimensions were interpreted in
information processing terms to provide a conceptual framework for un
derstanding the underlying mechanisms. Basic attention processes appea
red to be the ''proximal cause'' of many common everyday memory failur
es. Contributions of gender and health status to everyday memory funct
ioning were also examined. Higher incidence of illness and prescriptio
n drug use among elderly men was associated with a higher incidence of
encoding failures than among elderly women.