Spatial and temporal memory in 20 to 60 year olds.

Younger (mean age = 20 years) and older (mean age = 64 years) adults were tested on spatial and temporal memory tasks. No age difference was observed on the temporal task but older adults performed worse than younger adults on the spatial task. The absence of an age-related decline in performance on the temporal task is counter to most previous developmental research on adults' memory. This finding indicates that normal aging is not associated with poor encoding or retention of all types of information. The presence of an age-related decline in performance on the spatial task is consistent with most research on memory aging. Moreover, this finding indicates that aging affects retention of some types of information often assumed to be encoded automatically.