Journal of Gerontology 1978, Vol. 33, No. 2, 239-245 Orienting Task Effects on EDR and Free Recall in Three Age Groups 1 Elizabeth M. Zelinski, AM, 2 David A. Walsh, PhD, 2 - 3 and Larry W. Thompson, PhD 2 ' 3 The present investigation was designed to examine the effects of orienting task-controlled processing on electrodermal response and free recall at two delay intervals for 94 young, 49 young-old (age 55 to 70), and 61 old-old (age 71 to 85) individuals. Subjects were presented with a list of 25 words and performed one of the following tasks: semantic, nonsemantic, or passive listening, presented in an incidental memory paradigm, or intentional memorization. Recall was obtained 2 min or 48 hours after list presen- tation. At the 2-min delay, the pattern of recall across tasks for the young-old and old-old subjects was similar to that of college students. Overall, the old-old recalled fewer words than the young and young- old, while the young-old recalled as many words as the young. After 48 hours, the task-related recall pattern was observed only in the young group. The skin conductance data indicated that task effects were similar across the three age groups and that response magnitude was lower in the old-old than in the two younger groups. No differences in skin conductance were found between the young and young-old. Age differences in memory processing suggest that difficulties in delayed retrieval of semantically encoded words may increase during late adult years. Differences in electrodermal responses in the old-old com- pared to the young and young-old suggest that the range of autonomic responsivity to task demands may become restricted in advanced age. I N order to investigate the effects of different processing strategies on memory, orienting tasks have been used to control the nature of processing operations on stimuli. Jenkins and his colleagues have found that tasks requir- ing semantic processing of words result in greater recall than those requiring nonsemantic processing (Hyde & Jenkins, 1969, 1973; John- ston & Jenkins, 1971; Till & Jenkins, 1973; Walsh & Jenkins, 1973). Performance of tasks involving word meaning, without prior knowl- edge of recall requirements, results in free recall levels comparable to those observed in intentional memorization (Jenkins, 1974b). These findings led Jenkins (1974a) to empha- size that processing for meaningfulness is a critical determinant of memory performance. Craik and Lockhart (1972) have outlined a "levels of processing" framework of memory function which regards the trace as a by- product of the "depth" or degree of meaning- •This study was supported in part by HEW-NIA Grant 5 ROI AG00088-02 and by Biomedical Research Support Grant 5 SO7 RR070I2-I0from the Div. of Research Resources, Bureau of Health Professions, Education & Man- power Training, NIH. The authors gratefully acknowledge the help of Michael Duncker, Kevin Fink. Lisa Rusher. Lynn Santikian. and Barbara Zelinski for their aid in collecting and scoring data. The authors also wish to extend appreciation to Irene L. Hause, Kenneth Jobst, and Cynthia D. Pree for their assistance in manuscript preparation. 2 '\ndrus Gerontology Center, Unit, of Southern California. Los Angeles 90007. 'Also Dept. of Psychology. USC. fulness to which a word is processed. Poor recall following a semantic task is thought to be a function of "low level," simple percep- tual operations performed on stimuli, while superior recall following a semantic task is a function of processing past perceptual levels to "deeper," more complex semantic levels. Using the Craik and Lockhart (1972) formu- lations, Eysenck (1974) argued that the well- documented phenomenon of poor memory performance in older adults compared to the young (see Craik, 1977, for a review) was due to an age-related deficiency in semantic (i.e., "deep") processing. He compared recall of young and old individuals subsequent to performance of semantic and nonsemantic orienting tasks. He found that recall was greatest for semantic tasks and poorest for nonsemantic tasks in each age group. Al- though older people recalled as many words as the young when they performed a non- semantic task, they recalled fewer words than the young when the task was semantic. White (cited by Craik, 1977) found similar free-recall results following orienting task-controlled processing. Craik (1977) has argued that part of the age-related deficiencies in memory are related to inadequacies in attentional pro- cesses at initial encoding and recommends 239 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/geronj/article-abstract/33/2/239/562808 by guest on 21 January 2018