INFLUENCE OF PROCESSING VARIABILITY ON ADULT AGE-DIFFERENCES IN MEMORY DISTRIBUTION OF ORDER INFORMATION

The present study examined adult age differences in the recognition of order information. This experiment used a modified memory-scanning task in which the transposition distance between the current and original serial positions of the recognition probe were varied. On each trial, subjects also rated the confidence of their decision. The results indicated that both correct reaction time (RT) and error rate on the "no" trials decreased as a function of increasing transposition distance, which suggests that order information is represented in a distributed manner. Moreover, older adults' RTs and errors were higher than younger adults' RTs and errors at all three transposition distances. Also, older adults' Memory Operating Characteristic (MOC) curve variability was greater than that of the young. These data suggest that older adults exhibit more processing variability than the young adults. © 1990.