Everyday Memory and Aging

New investigations in memory and aging have focused on practical memory. The benefits of this new focus are to confirm findings based on laboratory research and to discover new variables that may influence age-related differences in performance. Three areas of practical memory research are reviewed here. Spatial memory skills are influenced by familiarity and organization. Activity memory appears to be affected by automaticity, familiarity, and motor cues. Recall of names and faces is related to elaborative processing and overlearning. The diverse task-specific findings require new theoretical and methodological integration, with specification of the critical differences between practical and laboratory tasks.