Ageing and organisation strategies in free recall: The role of cognitive flexibility

The first goal of this experiment was to examine the effect of age on recall and clustering across three successive trials. Sixty-two young (age 20-40 years) and 62 elderly (age 60-80 years) adults learnt a categorised word list for subsequent recall. A clustering index was computed to assess organisational strategy. Results showed that elderly adults performed less well on the recall test and forgot more words across trials. They also indicated that their clustering index was lower than that of younger adults but increased more across trials. Clustering was only associated with the recall scores for the younger adults. Participants were also administered cognitive tests (cognitive flexibility, cognitive speed, and categorical fluency) to explore the possible mediators of memory and organisational strategy performances. Younger adults performed better on all these tests. Statistical analyses revealed that the variable most closely associated with clustering was cognitive flexibility. This finding supports the view that the age-related decrement in strategic organisation is due to a decrease in cognitive flexibility.