Age Differences in Context Integration in Memory

This research examined the role of contextual integration in memories of younger and older adults.In 2 experiments, recall of a target picture to a context picture cue was better when sentences weregenerated that integrated the picture pair and when the picture pairs were already related to eachother. Age differences were smallest when sentences were generated for semantic-ally related pairs.Older adults generated the same type sentences as younger adults, although they generated fewerintegrations for unrelated pairs. In a 3rd experiment, younger adults could not differentiate betweenyounger- and older-generated sentences from Experiment 1, and the sentences did not differentiallyaffect recall performance. The results are discussed in terms of age differences in self-initiatedprocessing when using context.