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Biomedical subjects

F I Craik

Publications and source records attributed to F I Craik.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1991

Availability and category-frequency estimation.

Individuals judged how often examples of taxonomic categories had occurred in a study list. An availability hypothesis was tested--that frequency estimates are based on the retrieval of instances. Cued (by category names) recall of the examples served as an index of availability. The hypothesis was confirmed--there were strong positive correlations between frequency judgments and recall (with the influence of actual frequency removed)--given one or more of the following conditions: List instances were not categorized aloud as they were presented; frequency estimation was preceded by cued recall; frequency estimation was delayed by a week. Limitations on availability occurred under other conditions--notably, when individuals, during list presentation, named the categories to which items belonged and received feedback about their categorizations. Under these circumstances, correlations of frequency estimation and recall were often not significantly different from zero, and frequency judgments and recall sometimes reacted differently to changes in independent variables (e.g., frequency judgments of young and elderly subjects did not differ reliably, even though cued recall of young persons markedly exceeded that of elderly subjects).

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Age differences in working memory tasks: the role of secondary memory and the central executive system.

Two experiments are reported in which age differences in working memory performance are explored. In the first study, young and older adults held 2, 3, 4, or 5 unrelated words in mind while verifying a single or complex sentence. An age-related decrement was found in subsequent serial recall of the words, and this decrement was larger with longer word lists. Experiment 2 confirmed the interaction between age and list length, using list lengths of 4, 6, and 8 words and a free-recall procedure. There was no interaction between age and divided attention in either experiment. Surprisingly, sentence complexity had a greater detrimental effect on recall in the younger group. The results are discussed in terms of articulatory rehearsal being augmented by using secondary memory in the case of younger subjects.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1989

Age differences in predictions and performance on a cued recall task.

The notion that older adults fail to use optimal encoding strategies in memory tasks because of a deficit in memory monitoring was examined in a cued recall task. Participants were given different types of descriptors (initial letters, rhyme, category) for each word during encoding, and these descriptors were later given as cues at recall. Participants also predicted the likelihood of recalling each item. Age differences were found in recall performance, but there were no age differences in average predictions. However, the prediction ratings given by younger adults showed a greater difference between words recalled and words not recalled in the subsequent test than did the ratings of the older adults. Differences in recall associated with different types of processing were predicted poorly by all of the participants, but the relative recallability of specific words was well assessed by both age groups. We concluded that a memory monitoring deficit is not likely to be responsible for age differences in memory.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Age differences in components of metamemory.

Young adults (N = 58) and older adults (N = 55) answered 30 questions extracted from three dimensions of the Metamemory in Adulthood (MIA) questionnaire: Capacity, Task and Strategy. The older participants scored significantly lower on the Capacity dimension, indicating that they report having greater difficulty in everyday memory situations. There was no age difference on any item in the Task dimension; both groups were equally knowledgeable about memory task demands. Responses to Strategy items varied with type of strategy: younger adults were more likely than older adults to report the use of encoding strategies, while older adults reported significantly more use of strategies which involved planning and organization. A further group of employed young adults (N = 26) was added to clarify the respective roles of aging and environmental demands on strategy use. The findings suggest that both changes in lifestyle and the effects of aging per se play some part in the use of particular memory strategies.

Adolescent↗