Age differences in recollection: Specificity effects at retrieval

Three experiments were conducted to examine the effect of specificity at retrieval on the size of age differences in recollection. Participants encoded words in different contexts and were given recognition tests. Some of the test lists were constructed so that participants had to recollect specific aspects of the initial encoding events, whereas other test lists required participants to recollect only general aspects. Older adults showed reduced levels of recollection relative to younger adults for the high specificity tests, but not for the low specificity tests (Experiment 1). Encoding manipulations improved (Experiment 2) or reduced (Experiment 3) recollection levels but the effects did not interact with the specificity effect, whereas dividing attention (DA) at retrieval (Experiment 3) in younger adults resembled the effect of aging. The results suggest that older adults have greater difficulties in carrying out controlled retrieval processes to access specific information compared to their younger counterparts.