Memory scanning performance in healthy young adults, healthy older adults,and individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer type

A memory scanning(Sternberg, 1966, 1975) task was administered to healthy y oung adults, older adults, and two groups of individuals with dementia of t he Alzheimer's type (DAT) to determine age- and disease-related changes in the retrieval of information from short-term memory. Healthy older adults, in comparison to healthy young adults, displayed increases in both slopes a nd intercepts in memory scanning. Individuals at various stages of DAT (ver y mild, mild, moderate) displayed increases in both slopes and intercepts c ompared to nondemented age-matched control individuals. There was also some evidence that DAT individuals are more likely to engage in a self-terminat ing search instead of an exhaustive search of shortterm memory.