Context utilization in young and old adults.

Two experiments examined adult age differences in the spontaneous use of context to study and retrieve information. Young and old adults were presented with a series of homographs (targets) that were paired with two context words which biased a specific meaning of the target. Recognition memory for targets was then tested by presenting them in the same context or removing or varying the context. In general, recognition decreased in both groups as the retrieval context became more dissimilar to the study context, suggesting that both young and old adults utilize context and that congruent study and retrieval information facilitates retrieval. However, it appeared that older primarily encoded general semantic information relating to the association between target and context, whereas younger adults encoded distinctive information about individual targets. Such encoding differences could account for observed age differences in false recognitions for lures in old contexts and correct recognitions for targets in new contexts.