Social context effects on story recall in older and younger women: does the listener make a difference?

Full Abstract

The story-recall performance of older and younger women was examined within an oral story-retelling context with two listener conditions. Forty-eight older women (M age = 67.81 years; SD = 2.62) and 47 younger women (M age = 20.47 years; SD = 1.53) were asked to learn one of two stories with the goal to retell the story from memory either to an experimenter or to a young child. Did the listener make a difference in story recall? Yes. Although age-group differences in propositional recall favoring the younger women occurred when an experimenter was the listener, there were no age-group differences when a child was the listener. In addition, when a child was listening, both older and younger tellers adapted their narratives by producing more elaborations and repetitions, as well as by simplifying the more complex of the two stories. Across stories, however, the older tellers adjusted the complexity of their retellings to the age of their listeners more than did the younger tellers. Results highlight the importance of considering the social context of remembering in memory-aging research.

Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills

Author information

Author/s: Adams, Cynthia (C); Smith, Malcolm C (MC); Pasupathi, Monisha (M); Vitolo, Loretta (L);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene 97403, USA. cynadams(-atsign-)oregon.uoregon.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences (J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Jan; vol 57 (issue 1) : pp P28-40

Dates: Created 2002/01/04; Completed 2002/03/13; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 11773221, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.

MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

This article has not been indexed for related articles as yet, however you can still use the live related article search links below.

See 100+ related articles.