Effect of aging on familiarity-based and retrieval-based recognition.

A recognition and a recall task, dealing with the same items, were administered successively to a group of young subjects (age: 25-35) and to two groups of elderly subjects (age: 62-70 and 71-87). With regard to the recognition task, two types of response were distinguished, using the paradigm suggested by Horton et al. (1993): the familiarity-based and retrieval-based recognition. The results indicate that the performance on recall and recognition was modified by aging. However, the age effect on recall appeared also with a group of older subjects matched on overall recognition accuracy with the group of younger subjects, showing that the aging effect was more important for recall than for recognition. With the paradigm proposed by Horton et al., the results indicate that only the retrieval-based recognition were affected by aging. This pattern of results was still present when recognition accuracy per se was equated between young and old subjects.