Among the negative age-related changes in cognition, perhaps the most salient decline occurs in our ability to recall episodic information in the absence of cues. In the current study, we investigate how young and older adults differ in their retrieval processes and which mechanisms account for differences in recall performance using a set of state-of-the-art quantitative methods (e.g., semantic network modeling). The ultimate goal is to investigate whether these dynamics account for explaining age differences in a delayed recall test. Participants at younger ages will be recruited from the Psychology Research Pool for a in-lab session. Their data will then be compared with an older group of participants from the Virginia Cognitive Aging Project (VCAP).
