Adult age differences in word fragment completion priming as a function of presentation context
Date
1992
Authors
Small, Brent John
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Abstract
Indirect or implicit tests of memory assess the influence of recent experience on task performance without requiring awareness of remembering. The present experiment examined the influence of presentation context on younger (18-28 years) and older ( 60-70 years) adults indirect test performance. A total of 36 younger and 36 older adults participated. Presentation context was manipulated in two ways. First, target words either fit in meaningfully with the presentation context (sensible condition), or their meaning was incongruent with the context (non-sensible condition). The second context manipulation involved presenting sensible and non-sensible target words in passages, sentences or word-pairs. At test, a word fragment completion task was used to assess the influence of presentation context on indirect memory test performance.
Results indicated that target words in the sensible condition did not produce priming whereas words in the non-sensible condition did. Results also indicated that no statistically significant differences in priming were apparent across the passage, sentence, or word-pair contexts for either sensible or nonĀ-sensible target words. Additionally, the effect of age did not reliably interact with priming for either of the context manipulations.
These findings suggest that changes in an items' context influences performance on an indirect test of memory in some instances, but not others. The differences in priming between sensible and non-sensible target words are thought to reflect differences in the match between encoding and retrieval processes. Specifically, priming is produced when the processes evoked at study match those processes required at test. Results also indicate that changes in presentation context affect the indirect test performance of both age groups similarly.
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UN SDG 4: Quality Education