Semantic and episodic contributions of long-term memory to working memory in young and older adults.

= 60 older adults). We examined whether older adults may benefit from both forms of LTM within the same task, how episodic and semantic support interact, and which mechanisms underlie the semantic benefit to WM. The results show that both younger and older adults reliably benefited from episodic LTM support. Semantic relatedness also improved WM performance across age groups. Critically, analyses targeting underlying mechanisms indicated that the semantic benefit arose from facilitated formation of episodic traces within the activated portion of LTM, rather than from strengthened bindings maintained within WM itself. Together, these findings demonstrate that WM flexibly draws on episodic and semantic LTM and that this capacity remains largely intact in older adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).