Age differences in retrieval consistency and response dominance.

The probability of generating dominant responses and producing the same response on two occasions was compared for older and younger adults over three different intervals. Continuous retrieval from broadly defined semantic and orthographic categories was examined in Experiment 1; single-word retrieval from restricted categories was tested in Experiment 2 using a picture-naming task. There was no age difference in the tendency to generate normatively dominant responses in either experiment, but there were age differences in consistency. For broad categories, older were less consistent than younger adults at each intersession interval. With restricted categories, older adults showed a systematic decline in consistency over increasing intersession interval, while younger adults showed no change. Unlike prior research, we failed to find evidence for a positive relationship between verbal ability and response dominance.