Search and selection processes in implicit and explicit word-stem completion performance in young, middle-aged, and older adults

Abstract

In the present investigation, we sought to (1) replicate previous reports of impaired word-stem completion (WSC) priming and cued recall performance in older adults, (2) gain a better understanding of the differential roles of search and selection processes in implicit and explicit WSC, and (3) determine the particular aspects of WSC performance that are influenced by age. Experiment 1 demonstrated that older adults primed and recalled fewer items on a WSC task than middle-aged adults did, who in turn primed and recalled fewer itmes than young adults did. A series of item analyses indicated that choice of a stem completion is influenced by two independent sources of information: the familiarity of the completion reflected by word frequency and the cue-specific match between the stem and the completion word based on the common pronunciation of the stem. Experiment 2 demonstrated that older adults utilized cue-specific matching to the same degree as young and middle-aged adults. However, the impact of target familiarity changed across the lifespan. Older adults produced and recalled high-frequency targets as well as young adults but produced and recalled fewer low-frequency targets than did young participants. The results are consistent with the view that older adults rely on familiarity to a greater degree than do young adults.

Does priming with awareness reflect explicit contamination? An approach with a response-time measure in word-stem completion

“…With the same cues, explicit retrieval strategies can also be evoked by instructing the participant to retrieve words from the studied list (Word-Stem Cued Recall: WSCR). However, performances in the implicit version of this test are often sensitive to variables that affect explicit memory tests: divided attention (Clarys, Isingrini, & Haerty, 2000) and aging (Chiarello & Hoyer, 1988;Davis et al, 1990;Hultsch, Masson, & Small, 1991;Small, Hultsch, & Masson, 1995;Ryan, Ostergaard, Norton, & Johnson, 2001). Consistent with these results, the WSC test is also affected by depth-of-processing when the shallow study task, in contrast to a deep one, does not engage lexical processing of information (Fay, Isingrini, & Clarys, in press;Richardson-Klavehn & Gardiner, 1998).…”

An examination of daily activities and their scripts across the adult lifespan

“…We found that, overall, the number of events generated in a script increased with increasing script frequency, suggesting that some aspect of script representations may be subject to frequency effects, like other domains of knowledge (Grafman, 1995 (Spieler & Balota, 2000) or completingword stems (Ryan, Ostergaard, Norton, & Johnson, 2001), our script generation task differs in that it does not rely on external cuing for each event generated. Also, individuals may rely on personal experience when generating scripts.…”

Activation of segments, not syllables, during phonological encoding in speech production

“…That is, one and the same grapheme <a> has several phonemic values depending on whether it occurs in open or closed syllables. Experimental evidence from a pronunciation task reported elsewhere (see Schiller, 2000, footnote 8) suggests that native speakers of English have a strong tendency to assign a tense (long) pronunciation to vowels in open syllables (e.g., CV), whereas vowels in closed syllables generally receive lax (short) pronunciations (see also Ryan, Ostergaard, Norton, & Johnson, 2001).…”