Aging effects on prototype abstraction and concept identification.

The hypotheses that prototype abstraction is an automatic process unaffected by aging and that different aging effects associated with different types of concept learning can be accounted for by differential effortful memory process involvement were examined. Young and old adults were compared on tests of prototype abstraction and concept identification, and relationships between performance measures derived from these tasks and backward memory span were assessed. In the abstraction task, both age groups used prototypical organizational processes to structure incoming information, but age differences did exist in the specificity of the information used in prototype construction. Concept identification performance, however, declined with age, and the poorer performance of the old adults was related to their poorer memory skills. The results suggest that the different aging effects associated with different tests of conceptual skills are dependent upon the nature of the underlying processes.