WORKING-MEMORY AND AGING - DEFICIT OR STRATEGY DIFFERENCES

Thirty young and 30 older subjects were administered a reading compreh ension test and a working memory test involving processing of acceptab le and incongruous sentences with an increasing mnemonic preload. The complexity of incongruous sentences was assumed to solicit the process ing component of working memory, whereas the size of the mnemonic prel oad was assumed to solicit its storage component. Results suggested no t only reduced working memory capacity in older subjects, but also a c hange in their strategies relative to both the sentence processing/wor d recall and the speed/accuracy trade-offs: Older subjects favored sen tence processing to the detriment of word recall, and a subset of them favored accuracy to the detriment of speed when the memory load was h eavy. This change of strategy was reflected by the pattern of correlat ions between working memory measures and reading comprehension scores, in that the best comprehension scores were reached by the fastest you ng subjects, but by the most accurate older subjects. It is concluded that reduced working memory capacity intervenes in the age-related dif ferences in reading comprehension, but that the main modifications con cern the strategies used to cope with the conflictual requirements of the task.