Age Differences in Adults' Free Recall of Pictorial and Word Stimuli

Prior research has shown that adults generally remember pictorial stimuli better than printed words. The present study was designed to determine whether memory for these two visual modes might be differentially affected by age. Two female groups averaging 22.1 and 69.4 years of age received 8 trials on lists of 20 items presented as pictures or printed words. Pictorial stimuli were recalled better than the word stimuli by both age groups (p < .01), and the young subjects made fewer errors than the older subjects on both types of material (p < .001). The interaction of the age and visual mode variables was not significant. These results provide further evidence that memory processes in the elderly differ only quantitatively and not qualitatively from those employed by the young.