ADULT AGE-GROUP DIFFERENCES IN RECALL FOR THE LITERAL AND INTERPRETIVE MEANINGS OF NARRATIVE TEXT

This study examined age differences in recall for the literal and inte rpretive meanings of narrative text. Following presentation of one of two stories rich in both literal and interpretive content, younger (me an age = 19.2 years) and older (mean age = 72.2 years) adults were ask ed to retell and to interpret the story. Response task order was count erbalanced across participants. When asked to retell a story as close to the original as possible, the younger adults recalled more of the l iteral propositional content than did the older adults in the retell-f irst, although not in the interpret-first, condition. In addition, bot h older and younger adults recalled more of the main ideas (gist) rela tive to the details. When asked to interpret the same story, more olde r than younger adults produced deep and synthetic representations of t he story's interpretive meanings. In addition, there was a clear prefe rence among the older age group for deep-synthetic responding. Althoug h more younger than older adults produced analytic interpretations, wi thin the younger group there was no clear preference for either an ana lytic or a deep-synthetic style.