Biomedical subjects

M L Macht

Publications and source records attributed to M L Macht.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1984

Speed of recall in aging.

This experiment investigated age differences in the speed of verbal recall under experimentally controlled processing conditions. Twelve normal aged and 12 young adults learned a set of items by a procedure that required them to search a list to identify instances of common conceptual categories. This search procedure was used to control for age differences in initial processing. Memory for the target items was tested by free recall and cued recall in which each item was cued by its category label. There were no age differences in either rate of free recall or speed of cued recall under these conditions. This result appears to be inconsistent with the Birren hypothesis, which predicts age differences in the speed of verbal recall. This experiment illustrates the importance of experimentally controlled processing conditions for evaluating of age-related changes in cognitive speed.

Adult↗

PubMed1983

Age differences in cognitive effort in recall.

A secondary task methodology was used to investigate age differences in the amount of cognitive effort demanded by free recall. Aged and young adults performed a reaction time task while simultaneously retrieving a list of items in multitrial free-recall learning. RTs were slower in aged than young adults on each trial, suggesting that free recall is more demanding for older persons. In addition, the secondary task did not interfere with recall by older adults, suggesting that this technique is feasible in older persons. These results are consistent with the cognitive-effort hypotheses which postulate age differences in the demands of memory processing to be one factor underlying age-related deficits. An additional finding suggested that age differences in retrieval effort may also be related to differences in list organization.

Adolescent↗