Aging and amnesia: A running span analysis

Abstract

Groups of young (N = 36), old (N = 7), and amnesic Korsakoff patients (N = 6) were tested with a running memory span procedure. The running span task was administered with a fast presentation rate (2 digits/sec) under passive listening instructions to minimize the contribution of secondary or rehearsed memory. The young recalled with greater accuracy than subjects in the old and amnesic groups. These results are inconsistent with the hypothesis that storage and retrieval deficits in aging and amnesia are limited to secondary memory. Rather, they suggest that memory impairment in these populations is more extensive than is often maintained. © 1980, The Psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.