Differential age-related influences on memory for verbal-symbolic information and visual-spatial information?

Adults from a wide range of ages were administered parallel versions of three memory tasks designed to involve verbal-symbolic information or visual-spatial information. Several analytical procedures were used to determine whether there were selective age-related effects on measures reflecting spatial information processing compared to those reflecting verbal-symbolic information processing. The results provided little support for this hypothesis and instead were consistent with the existence of a common age-related factor that contributes to the age differences in many cognitive measures.