AGE-BIASED INTERPRETATION OF MEMORY SUCCESSES AND FAILURES IN ADULTHOOD

This study extends previous research, which has demonstrated that age stereotypes bias the interpretation of everyday memory failures, by ex amining the responses of 81 young and 84 old participants to questions about the meaning and causes of memory successes and failures. The sc enarios used described memory situations in which age differences woul d be small or nonexistent and included situtional factors that could a ccount for the memory outcome, providing a more stringent test of the age-bias hypothesis. Under such testing conditions, memory successes i ll old targets are seen to be less typical than for young targets. Mor eover, memory failures are seen to be more strongly caused by lack of ability and viewed as more worrisome. Finally, memory outcomes, in gen eral, are perceived to be less controllable for old targets.