ABSTRACT
The last decade of cognitive aging research has demonstrated convincingly that not all aspects of cognition show losses with similar trajectories as individuals age. For example, within the domain of memory function, performance on episodic tasks that require the reinstatement of the surrounding spatio-(where) and temporal-(when) context (i.e., source) of a previous event, shows large age-related decline (Spencer & Raz, 1995). By contrast, retrieving the content does not. Working memory (WM), the process by which information is coded into a short-term buffer, actively maintained and subsequently retrieved, also shows age-related decrement (Jonides, Marshuetz, Smith, Reuter-Lorenz, Koeppe, & Hartley, 2000). On the other hand, simple, old/new recognition memory does not show as dramatic a decrement and, in some studies, shows no age-related deficit at all (Craik & McDowd, 1987).
