Twenty-two elderly (mean age = 71.23 years) and 22 young adult (mean age = 24.76 years) college students were given two trials each of a recognition memory task for separate lists of words and nonsense syllables. Measures derived from signal detection theory were used to assess age differences in recognition memory (d') independently of response criterion (Lx). It was expected that a storage deficit in the elderly would result in relatively less improvement in memory on the second trial, particularly for the nonsense syllables. Younger adults were found to show greater increments in d' on the second trial and to retain more information about each item over trials, but there were no age differences in improvement between words and nonsense syllables. The response criterion results suggested that attitudes toward responding represent a complex interaction of age, type of material, and number of trials. Compared to the younger adults, the elderly set higher criteria with words, and lower criteria with nonsense syllables on the first trial.
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GORDON et al. (1974) studied this question.