ACTING OR LISTENING - ADULT AGE-DIFFERENCES IN-SOURCE RECALL OF ENACTED AND NONENACTED STATEMENTS

This study explored age-related differences in item and source recall of enacted and nonenacted items in a sample of healthy adults between the ages of 35 and 80 years (N = 1,000). Participants were screened on a variety of demographic, psychometric, and biological variables. The y were presented with sentences (e.g., ''Lift the book'') that they ei ther read or enacted. They were then asked to recall the object of eac h stimulus sentence (item recall) and to identify its format of encodi ng (source recall). Age-related decrements were observed both in item and source memory, although age differences in source memory were more accentuated than in item memory. Further, the results indicated an ov erall impairment of source memory across age when individual differenc es in the demographic, psychometric, and biological variables were tak en into consideration.