Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, Vol 51, Issue 6 P335-P345, Copyright © 1996 by The Gerontological Society of America
Adult age differences in source recall: a population-based study
K Erngrund, T Mantyla and LG Nilsson
Umea University, Sweden. [email protected]
Age differences in source recall were investigated in a population- based
sample of healthy adults aged 35 to 80 years (N = 1000). Participants, who
were screened on a variety of demographic, psychological, and biological
variables, studied facts about well-known and unknown persons that were
presented in four different ways, depicting four different sources of item
information. An age-related deterioration of both item and source recall
was observed, with source recall being more impaired than item recall.
Source error analyses revealed an increase of source amnesia in subjects
aged 75-80 years. Individual differences in background variables, age,
gender, and word comprehension were related to source recall of well-known
items, whereas age and years of formal education were related to source
recall of unknown items. Source amnesia was accentuated in the two oldest
cohorts and related to word comprehension. The age-related tendency to
forget the source even when the fact is retained is suggested to be a
specific feature of cognitive aging.
