Social context effects on story recall in older and younger women: Does the listener make a difference?

The story-recall performance of older and younger women was examined within an oral story-retelling context with two listener conditions. Forty-eight older women (M age = 67.81 years; SD = 2.62) and 47 younger women (M age = 20.47 years; SD = 1.53) were asked to learn one of two stories with the goa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences Psychological sciences and social sciences, 2002, Vol.57 (1), p.P28-P40
Main Authors: ADAMS, Cynthia, SMITH, Malcolm C, PASUPATHI, Monisha, VITOLO, Loretta
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Adult. Elderly
Age
Age Factors
Aged
Aging
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Comparative studies
Developmental psychology
Factor Analysis, Statistical
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Learning
Mental Recall
Middle Aged
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Recall
Social Environment
Speech Perception
Storytelling
Time Factors
Verbal Behavior
Women
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Summary:The story-recall performance of older and younger women was examined within an oral story-retelling context with two listener conditions. Forty-eight older women (M age = 67.81 years; SD = 2.62) and 47 younger women (M age = 20.47 years; SD = 1.53) were asked to learn one of two stories with the goal to retell the story from memory either to an experimenter or to a young child. Did the listener make a difference in story recall? Yes. Although age-group differences in propositional recall favoring the younger women occurred when an experimenter was the listener, there were no age-group differences when a child was the listener. In addition, when a child was listening, both older and younger tellers adapted their narratives by producing more elaborations and repetitions, as well as by simplifying the more complex of the two stories. Across stories, however, the older tellers adjusted the complexity of their retellings to the age of their listeners more than did the younger tellers. Results highlight the importance of considering the social context of remembering in memory-aging research.
ISSN:1079-5014
1758-5368
DOI:10.1093/geronb/57.1.p28