ABSTRACT
The experiment on age differences in memory presented in this chapter was conducted in the traditions of life-span developmental psychology and the information processing approach to cognitive psychology. The memory phenomena of interest in this paper concern both short- as well as long-term memory. In general, we investigate how short-term memory is related to other processes of cognitive functioning, long-term memory, and age. The main assumption that underlies the experiment is that performance on selected short-term memory tasks does not vary as a function of age within the age-range under study; however, it is assumed that other domains of cognitive functioning do show age-related variation. In addition, it is assumed that, because of the effects that cognitive functioning exerts on memory, an age-related variation in memory performance can be observed (cf. Craik, 1977). This variation, however, does not reflect changes in short-term memory performance per se; rather, it indicates changes in other cognitive functions, e.g., performance in problem solving.
