Age Differences in the Temporal Integration of Language

Results of a previous experiment suggested that old subjects are no worse than young subjects at remembering meaningless verbal material but are at a disadvantage when dealing with meaningful material. This result contradicts established views, so two short experiments were carried out to examine age differences in short‐term memory for various types of verbal material. The results confirmed the original observation that old subjects are at a greater disadvantage when dealing with highly meaningful material and also showed old subjects to be more vulnerable to the effects of supraspan interference. An explanation of the results is put forward in terms of age differences in temporal integration.