The effects of age and expertise on memory
Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of age and expertise on memory performance. Poorer recall by the elderly has been explained by their failure to use elaborate encoding of information. Within expert domains, however, expertise is thought to facilitate elaborate processing. Therefore, within expert domains, recall by older experts should be improved because processing deficits should be compensated for by the beneficial effects of expertise. In the present study, younger and older bridge experts and novices were tested using bridge-like tasks and nonbridge tasks. Older experts recalled more total cards and had larger chunks than did young novices on bridge-like tasks. However, on tasks in which bridge knowledge was irrelevant the young novices' memory performance was better than that of the older experts. The beneficial effects of expertise did not compensate for all age differences because differences were found between young and older experts. These results are discussed in terms of the roles of task-specific knowledge and non-specific factors in producing age-related change in memory.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Offenbach, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Developmental psychology
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