Effects of ageing on different explicit and implicit memory tasks

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of ageing on two implicit and two explicit memory tasks. Within each memory category (implicit or explicit), the tasks differed in their reliance on perceptual or conceptual processing. Large age-related differences were found on the two explicit memory tasks, regardless of the perceptual-conceptual difference. Age-related differences were much smaller on the implicit tasks; no differences were found on the perceptual version (word-fragment completion) but older subjects showed less priming on the conceptual version (category production). It is suggested that the dissociation between perceptual and conceptual priming reflects selective age-related impairments of different cortical regions.