ABSTRACT
Research has identified many quantitative (e.g., amount of information remembered) and qualitative (e.g., types of information remembered) shifts in memory functioning that appear to characterize normal aging (for review, see McDaniel, Einstein, & Jacoby, 2008). For the most part, it is explicitly or implicitly assumed that memory change is associated with normative alterations in cortical structures associated with basic cognitive processes (e.g., speed, working memory, and inhibitory functions), with change driven by genetically influenced aging processes (McGue & Johnson, 2008), normative neuropathologic processes (Wilson, 2008), or health-related factors that are probabilistically related to aging (Spiro & Brady, 2008).
