Aging and Memory for Schematically vs Taxonomically Organized Verbal Materials

Abstract

Two experiments examined age differences in the effects of type of organization on recall of verbal materials. Young and older adults studied a list of simple verb-noun phrases that were organized either taxonomically by categories or schematically by activities, and then were tested for recall. Relative to taxonomic organization, schematic organization was found to facilitate recall in both age groups, although the effect of organization was only present for the older adults when explicit organizational cues were presented. The enhancement associated with schematic organization was attributed to the additional temporal and causal connections between items. These associations were assumed to be responsible for the facts that, relative to taxonomic organization, schematic organization was associated both with more correspondence between input and output orders and with more items being retrieved the first time an activity or category grouping was accessed at recall.