Younger and older adults' recall of typical and a typical actions from script-based text: Evidence for interruption and bizarre-imagery effects

In the present research, younger (mean age 20) and older (mean age 78) adul ts' perception and recall of scripted and nonscripted actions were examined . Two primary types of nonscripted or atypical actions were presented: thos e that interrupted the sequence of the script and those that were irrelevan t to the script. Script-irrelevant actions also varied in terms of how plau sible they were in relationship to both the sentence they were embedded in and the context of the story. Across experiments, both younger and older ad ults recalled script-interruptive actions better than all other actions, in cluding script actions. In addition, an unexpected finding was that both yo unger and older adults recalled implausible (bizarre) script-irrelevant act ions better than script actions. This latter finding suggests that a bizarr e-imagery effect may operate in both younger and older adults. Older adults ' better recall of atypical actions over script actions is noteworthy, as t hese results question the assumption that older adults show an increased re liance on their schematic knowledge structures to recall. Contrary to expec tations, older adults showed better recall of actions that required more ac tive story integration (interruptive and implausible atypical actions) than actions requiring less integration (script and plausible atypical actions) .