Imagery and modality in sentence acquisition by adult males and females.

The hypothesis that imagery use by the aged in learning concrete materials is suppressed under visual presentation conditions was investigated in a comparison of acquisition of sentences across three learning trials. Ten men and women in each of three age groups (21.4, 39.7, and 69.5 years) were given five abstract and five concrete sentences under either auditory or visual presentation. It was hypothesized that interference between perceptual and mediational processes would occur when both were dependent on the same store (visual or auditory), and that the oldest group would be most subject to this interference effect with concrete sentences. The results provided support for this hypothesis and led to the further suggestion that the effect of interference was mediated by practice.