Recall and recognition of old information in relation to age and sex.

Recall and recognition memory were tested in 120 men and women from each of six age decades, 20-29, 30 to 39...70 to 79. The memory test was of items which had occurred long ago, ranging from 1910-1919 to the 1970s, covering socio-historic events and events from the world of entertainment. Unlike with newly acquired information, the difference between recall and recognition memory for this type of naturally obtained information was similar for all age groups. Thus, retrieval deficits as a function of age were not observed. The memory for this type of information was good throughout most of the lifespan. Although an interaction between the age of the subject and the age of the information was found, contrary to previous results no one age period appeared best for information encoding.