Memory for temporal context: Effects of aging and retrieval strategies

The purpose of the present study was to re-explore the effects of age on memory for temporal context, assessed by a list discrimination task. Contrary to previous studies, each list (with faces as stimuli) was associated with a different type of judgement (honesty versus intelligence rating). The results showed no age differences on this task when no particular retrieval strategy was induced. However, when participants were encouraged to retrieve the list of occurrence of the items by retrieving the type of judgement made at encoding, there was an age effect. Older adults’ performance was at chance, whereas younger adults had a good performance. Moreover, younger adults who reported using the strategy performed as well as younger adults who did not use it. These results will be discussed by reference to the distinction between automatic versus effortful encoding processes.