EXPRESS: Age-related Differences in Recognition Memory for Discourse: The Case of Modified Words, Competitors, and Related Lures

Modified words ( bear in injured and dangerous bear ) have been shown to be retrieved more easily from memory compared to unmodified counterparts ( bear ) during real time sentence processing. However, there has been little research on whether and how this modification benefit affects subsequent surprise recognition memory task, and how such an effect is modulated by cognitive aging. Utilizing a sentence comprehension paradigm and a subsequent surprise recognition memory task, we observed that modifying adjectives (e.g., injured and dangerous) benefit recognition memory for target words (e.g., bear ) against phonological lures (e.g., beer ). Moreover, older adults were significantly less likely to correctly reject semantic lures (e.g., moose ) relative to younger adults, but they exhibited no memory deficit for phonological ( beer ) or unrelated lures (e.g., screw ). This suggests that modifications may strengthen memory traces for the surface form of the associated words thereby aiding long-term subsequent recognition. Further, older adults are particularly susceptible to semantic interference, supporting theories which assuming an age-related inhibitory deficit and/or an increased reliance on gist-based memory.