Age differences in nonverbal memory tasks.

Age significantly predicted performances of 120 volunteers, 20 to 84 years old, on six memory tests using visual, auditory, or tactile items which clearly defied verbal labeling. Low scores of persons in the sixth and seventh decade of life were responsible for the age effect. Age accounted for differences in recognition and in reproduction performances over and above the impact shared with a person's performances on the WAIS Block Design and Vocabulary tests. Neither decision criteria, derived from signal detection measures, nor Vocabulary scores differed across six age groups. The progressively lower recognition d' scores across the six age decades suggested that nonverbal memory processing through all three modalities was affected adversely by age.