Memory for figurative texts in adult women
Date
1988
Authors
Gould, Odette N.
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Abstract
Previous theoretical and experimental work has suggested that older adults may develop and use an adaptive style of processing that emphasizes metaphoric and moralistic aspects of language materials. This style of processing may be associated with maintenance of performance in processing complex language materials. In the present study, 30 young (M age= 26 years) and 30 older women (M age = 66 years) performed three class.es of tasks: (a) reading and recall of three stories (viz., fables, metaphoric stories and a non-figurative story), (b) interpretation of metaphors and fables, and (c) tasks hypothesized to be related to figurative interpretation. The younger women were found to recall a higher proportion of propositions from all three types of stories even though no age differences were found for the figurative interpretation tasks. These findings suggest that contrary to predictions, the older women were not able to use their figurative text interpretation abilities to compensate for age-related memory losses. The latter explanation was supported by the lack of a strong correlation between interpretation ability and recall performance. No clear pattern of relationships between the hypothesized component tasks of figurative interpretation emerged in the correlational data. Further analyses were done using subsamples of high scorers on key variables. With some of these subsamples, the differences in recall performance between the age groups were not significant for the fables. These findings lend partial support to the notion that at least some older women may show higher recall performances with figurative than with literal materials.
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UN SDG 4: Quality Education