684 CHAPTER 15
attempting to “look it up” in memory, and so to become aware of it. For
instance, essay tests assess a person’s ability to recall information about a
topic. In contrast, to recognize information requires fi rst perceiving it and
then comparing it to information stored in memory; if what you perceive
matches something you’ve previously stored in memory, you’ve recognized
the stimulus. For instance, multiple-choice tests assess a person’s ability to
recognize a correct answer to a question.
Healthy older people often have little diffi culty with recognition but
do have problems with some aspects of recall. In particular, older people
sometimes have trouble recalling the names of common objects on demand.
Thus, they might say, “I went to the store to buy a ‘thingamajig’ this morn-
ing.” The person can describe the object or recognize the correct word
when someone else says it, and he or she may even recall the correct word
a few minutes later when talking about something else (Nicholas et al.,
1985). In addition, the elderly often have trouble remembering the source
of information—where or when they learned it (Schacter et al., 1991, 1997).
However, in spite of these diffi culties, healthy older people can often recall tem-
porarily forgotten names of common things when given cues or hints. Moreover,
with normal aging, the ability to recall personal information is preserved; people
can recall important episodes from their past.Processing Speed, Attention, and Working Memory
Memory involves storing information and then later accessing it. Specifi c mental
processes are used to store and access information, and these processes can take
varying amounts of time. Older adults have a slower processing speed, so they gen-
erally learn new information at a slower rate, need more exposure to the to-be-
learned material, and need more practice in retrieving the information after they
have learned it. For these reasons, the elderly may be impaired when carrying out
tasks that require rapid responses (Filit et al., 2002; Salthouse, 2001). One expla-
nation for the slowed processing that comes with advanced age is that the myelin
sheaths coating the axons degrade or disappear, which then causes the neurons’
signals to dissipate, and hence communication among brain areas is impaired
(Andrews-Hanna et al., 2007).
Attention involves selecting some information for more careful analysis: what
a person pays attention to gets processed more fully than what he or she does not
pay attention to. The ability to sustain attention or to divide attention sequentially
among multiple tasks (known as multitasking) is also likely to decline as people
age (Parasuraman, Nestor, & Greenwood, 1989). Thus, older adults may have
a harder time performing tasks such as balancing a checkbook while talking on
the phone.
Many tasks—as well as the tests used in neuropsychological assessments—
require both sustained attention and the faster processing speed
typical of younger people. For instance, one test
that requires both abilities is the Trail Making
Test (Reitan, 1958), a timed test that requires
the individual to connect dots in a particular se-
quence; one version involves dots with alternating
numbers and letters, and test-takers are asked to
connect the dots in ascending and alphabetical or-
der (see Figure 15.1 for a similar task). The aver-
age 25-year-old takes 26 seconds to complete the
task, whereas the average 72-year-old takes 70
seconds to complete it (Spreen & Straus, 1998).
Mrs. B. was not able to complete the test as in-
structed; she connected only the numbered dots
and omitted the lettered dots entirely (LaRue &
Watson, 1998).An older person may sometimes be unable to
recall the name of a common object but be able
to recognize the name if someone else says it.
This and other normal aging-related cognitive
changes do not usually impair daily functioning.Andersen Ross/Iconica/Getty Images
15.1 • Trail Making Test The Trail Making
Test (Reitan, 1958), similar to this fi gure, involves
connecting dots in a particular fashion—alternating
numbers and letters in ascending and alphabetical
order. The test-taker is to make a line from 1 to A,
then from A to 2, from 2 to B, and so on.Figure 15.1g 511J
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