Adult age differences in memory for verbs and nouns

Younger and older adults were asked to remember noun pairs (e.g., head - ca p), verb pairs (e.g., bounce - throw), and verb-noun pairs (e.g., break - s tick). For half of the pairs, participants used imagined objects and perfor med an action or series of related actions for each pair. For the other hal f of the pairs, participants read but did not perform the pairs. Free recal l and cued recall tests revealed that age differences in memory for both pe rformed and nonperformed items were larger for verbs than for nouns. The re call advantage of nouns over verbs was larger for alder than for younger ad ults. Verbs are hypothesized to be more difficult for older adults to remem ber because they are more abstract and less specific than nouns and because it is more difficult to integrate verbs with other words than to integrate nouns with other words.