Adult Age Differences in Frequency Judgments of Categorical Representations

Abstract

Adult age differences were examined for relative frequency judgments on a task in which categories had either zero, one, three, or five instances in a study list. Judgments required selecting from pairs of category names which member had the greater representation of instances in the prior list. Contrary to the results obtained in earlier studies using a task in which discrete events vary in frequency of occurrence, an age difference favoring young adults over elderly adults in accuracy of frequency judgments was found for categories. Neither instructional variation (incidental learning vs. intentional learning) nor variation in priming (cuing vs. noncuing with the list of categories prior to the study trial) yielded either main effects or interaction effects with age. The results were interpreted in terms of an age deficit in either the storage or the retrieval of memory traces of category names established by the automatic elicitation of implicit associative responses to instances of taxonomic categories.

Adult age comparisons in the processing of event frequency information.

“…Those data show slightly better frequency test performance by the older adults relative to the younger adults, but the age difference does not approach statistical reliability, F (1, 46) < 1. Although this outcome points to the absence of an adult age difference, Kausler, Hakami, and Wright (1982) have demonstrated that younger adults accumulate more category-level frequency information from individual exemplar frequencies than do older adults. That finding suggests the possibility that younger adults may have been misled by category-level information when making between-categories item-to-item comparisons.…”

Aging and memory for frequency of occurrence of novel, visual stimuli: Direct and indirect measures.

“…The literature regarding whether there are age differences in the ability to judge frequency of occurrence is mixed. Whereas considerable evidence supports Hasher and Zacks's assertion regarding age constancy in judging frequency of occurrence (Attig & Hasher, 1980; di Pellegrino, Nichelli, & Faglioni, 1988; Hasher & Zacks, 1979, Experiment 2; Kausler & Puckett, 1980; Sanders, Wise, Liddle, & Murphy, 1990), other researchers have found age differences (di Pellegrino et al, 1988; Freund & Witte, 1986, Experiment 3; Hasher & Zacks, 1979, Experiment 2; Kausler, Hakami, & Wright, 1982; Kausler, Lichty, & Hakami, 1984; Kausler, Salthouse, & Saults, 1987; Tweedy & Vakil, 1988; Warren & Mitchell, 1980). Thus, it is still unclear whether the ability to judge frequency of occurrence is resistant to the effects of age.…”

Judgments of Category Size: Now You Have Them, Now You Don't

“…In many respects the design and procedures were similar to those used by Kausler, Hakami, and Wright (1982) and by Tzeng (1976).…”