Psychology and Aging 2013 American Psychological Association

2013, Vol. 28, No. 4, 902909 0882-7974/13/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0033263

Does Aging Affect Recall More Than Recognition Memory?

Stacey L. Danckert and Fergus I. M. Craik
Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Although it is generally agreed that recall performance declines more than recognition memory perfor-
mance in the course of normal aging, there are some dissenting voices. There are also a few empirical
findings that cast doubt on that conclusion. In light of these ambiguities the present experiments were
designed to answer the question in a more definitive fashion. Over a series of 3 experiments, groups of
younger and older adults performed recall and recognition tests successively on the same lists of words.
Several analyses of the resulting data converge on the conclusion that there is a consistent age-related
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

decrement in recall that is disproportionately greater than the age-related decrement in recognition. This
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

conclusion is in line with several theoretical accounts of age-related differences in cognitive processing
and also with emerging evidence from cognitive neuroscience.

Keywords: recall, recognition, aging, verbal memory, successive testing

It is widely accepted that the processes of recall and recognition
memory differ in significant ways. At the cognitive level, one
influential view holds that whereas recognition can be accom-
plished by either of two independent processes, familiarity and
recollection (Mandler, 1980), successful recall depends largely on
conscious recollection (Jacoby, Toth, & Yonelinas, 1993). There is
also good evidence that across the adult life span age-related losses
are greater for recollection than for familiarity (Jennings & Jacoby,
1993, 1997), and this result suggests that age-related declines in
memory performance should be greater in recall than in recogni-
tion tasks. There is evidence to support this conclusion (Craik &
McDowd, 1987), but the question of whether the memory impair-
ments associated with aging are more strongly linked to losses in
recall still suffers from conflicting results.
In support of the view that age-related memory impairments are
less in recognition than in recall, Schonfield and Robertson (1966)
reported a study that found substantial age-related drops in recall
but relatively small losses in recognition memory. Craik and
McDowd (1987) confirmed the finding of greater losses in cued recall
than in recognition with increasing age; they also used secondary task
performance as a measure of resource demands and found greater
secondary task costs for recall compared with recognition, and that
recall costs were differentially greater for older adults. This last
result implies that the processes of recollection are more effortful
This article was published Online First August 26, 2013.
Stacey L. Danckert and Fergus I. M. Craik, Rotman Research Institute at
Baycrest, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The work reported was supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences
and Engineering Research Council of Canada to Fergus I. M. Craik. We are
grateful for helpful comments on the manuscript from Paul Duberstein and
two reviewers, from colleagues Ellen Bialystok, Nigel Gopie and Nathan
Rose, and for technical help from Lindsay Delima, Brittany Fredericks,
Karen Lau, Waqar Qadir, and Sandra Oziel.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Fergus
I. M. Craik, Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre, 3560 Bathurst St.,
Toronto, ON, Canada M6A 2E1. E-mail: fcraik@research.baycrest.org
902
and resource demanding than those involved in recognition, and
that older adults are less able to muster and deploy such processing
resources. A further age-related difficulty with recall tasks may be
associated with a declining ability to self-initiate retrieval pro-
cesses, although this problem may be circumvented by the provi-
sion of increased environmental support during recognition testing
(Craik, 1983, 1986).
Other reports are less supportive, however. Uttl has suggested
that the small effects of aging on recognition memory may reflect
the fact that recognition tests are relatively easy and so result in
ceiling effects for younger participants; a meta-analysis confirmed
this suspicion, yielding the conclusion that age-related declines in
recognition memory are larger than previously thought (Uttl,
Henry, & Baltimore, 2007). Other studies have also suggested that
recall and recognition fall off proportionately with age. For exam-
ple, Baddeley (1996) reported results on the Doors and People
test (Baddeley, Emslie, & Nimmo-Smith, 1994), which yields
recall and recognition scores for visual and verbal materials. He
tested groups of middle-aged and elderly participants and found
essentially equivalent age-related declines for recall and recogni-
tion. It should be noted that Baddeley transformed the raw scores
to z-scores, however, and that this may yield a different conclusion
from an analysis based on raw scores (see also Kopelman et al.,
2007; Park et al., 2002). It is possible that recognition and cued
recall are associated with reduced amounts of variance compared
with free recall, in which case age-related declines in the various
measures would appear more similar when expressed as z-scores.
Given these ambiguities, it seemed worthwhile to examine the
question of whether memory problems in older adulthood can be
linked differentially to losses in recall and recognition in a slightly
different way. Specifically, the present studies were designed to
assess relative age-related declines in recall and recognition under
a variety of encoding conditions. In addition, we attempted to
ensure that ceiling effects could not account for the results (Uttl et
al., 2007). One way in which the present procedures differed from
most previous experiments of this type was that recall and recog-
nition tests were performed successively on the same lists. In this
way we kept both materials and participants constant across tests
 RECALL, RECOGNITION, AND AGING 903

and were able to explore various contingent relations at the single
word levelfor example, given that a word was recognized by
participants, what was the probability that it was also recalled?
Experiment 1
This experiment was designed to evaluate age-related changes
in recall and recognition. Recall and recognition tests were per-
formed on the same list of words, which allowed calculation of the
conditional probability of recalling a word given that it was rec-
ognized. In addition, we used a large set of items with the aim of
keeping overall recognition scores off ceiling.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Materials. Two sets of 10 lists of 20 common nouns were
used. Half of the participants studied one set of lists and the other
half studied the other set of lists. In addition to the 200 studied
words, the recognition test featured 200 lure words, making a total
of 400 words that were randomized into 10 additional lists of 40
words. Two versions of the recognition lists were also constructed,
with half of the participants receiving each version. Each encoding
and recognition list was matched for word frequency using the
KuceraFrancis frequency norms (Kucera & Francis, 1967). Fi-
nally, word order in each presentation and recognition list was
randomized separately for each participant.
Procedure. Words in the study lists were presented visually at
a 3-s rate, and each list was followed by a free recall test and also

Method a recognition test, as described below. After presentation of each

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

study list, participants were given an interference task in which

Participants. A total of 48 individuals participated in the
they counted backward by three from a random 3-digit number for
experiment after providing informed consent, 24 older adults (18
30 s to eliminate recency effects. This was immediately followed
females) ranging in age from 60 to 80 years (M 69.54 years) and
by the recall test in which participants were given 60 s for written
24 younger adults (21 females) ranging from 18 to 35 years (M
free recall of words from the preceding list. Participants were
20.71 years). All participants were fluent English speakers and
informed that they had 1 min for recall; in the very few cases in
received either monetary compensation or course credit for their
which they were still writing at the end of this period they were
participation. The younger participants were all students at the
allowed to complete writing any recalled words they had still not
University of Toronto. The older participants were community-
written down. This procedure was repeated for all 10 lists. Fol-
living adults who traveled in to our lab to take part in the study;
lowing all 10 presentation and recall phases, participants com-
they were drawn from a pool of volunteers maintained by the
pleted a 5-min questionnaire conducted for another purpose; this
Psychology Department at the University of Toronto. In terms of
provided a break between the recall and recognition phases.
occupation, the 24 older participants had worked at a variety of
The recognition tests were then administered. Ten lists of 40
professional (19) or technical/secretarial (five) jobs and 22 were
words were presented on the computer screen in a prerandomized
now retired. Occupations included managerial/financial/marketing
order. The 200 words from the presentation lists were mixed with
(eight), secretarial (five), and teaching (four); the group did not
200 new lure words, and the resulting 400 words sorted into 10
include any retired university faculty members. With regard to
lists, each containing 20 targets and 20 lures. For each list partic-
health, only two of the young adults were taking medications on a
ipants were asked to indicate any words they recognized as having
regular basis (birth control pills). In contrast, 20 of the older adults
been on one of the study lists by pressing the z or m key, which
were on some form of medication, including long-term prophy-
were labeled yes and no, respectively, on the keyboard. To reduce
lactic medications for blood pressure (eight), cholesterol (eight),
both stress and boredom, recognition was self-paced. Thus, par-
bone disease (five), prostate (two), and arthritis (nine). All partic-
ticipants first recalled and then recognized the same lists of 20
ipants also rated their current health on a 10-point scale, where 1
words. Finally the participants completed the Shipley vocabulary
was poor and 10 was excellent; ratings for the young and old
test to provide a measure of verbal ability. The experiment lasted
groups were 8.2 and 7.8, respectively, t(46) 1.00, p .32. The
approximately 60 min.
older adults had received 15.3 years of education on average and
had an average score of 36.7 on the Shipley vocabulary test
Results
(Zachary, 1986). The younger adults had received 14.9 years of
education on average, and their mean Shipley score was 31.5. Thus Table 1 displays the means for recall and recognition as a
the older group was rather high functioning, with somewhat more function of age. For recognition, the table shows hits, false alarms,
education and higher vocabulary scores than the younger group. and corrected recognition (hits false alarms). The salient aspect

Table 1
Experiment 1: Probabilities of Recall and Recognition as a Function of Age for Both Full and Matched Data Sets

Recognition
n Recall Hits False alarms Hits false alarms RC|RG

Full data set

Young 24 .49 (.16) .80 (.11) .12 (.12) .68 (.20) .59 (.14)
Old 24 .29 (.10) .76 (.11) .21 (.14) .55 (.15) .36 (.13)
Matched data set
Young 18 .46 (.15) .76 (.11) .15 (.12) .62 (.20) .56 (.14)
Old 18 .31 (.10) .80 (.08) .19 (.11) .61 (.12) .37 (.13)
Note. RC|RG column refers to the probability of recalling items given recognition. Mean probabilities are shown in bold type; standard deviations are
in parentheses.
 904 DANCKERT AND CRAIK

of Table 1 is that the age difference in recall scores (0.20) was
larger than the corresponding age difference in corrected recogni-
tion scores (0.13). A 2-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) involv-
ing age group (young, old) and memory test (recall, recognition)
was carried out on the means in Table 1. The analysis yielded main
effects of age, F(1, 46) 16.04, p .001, 2 0.26, and memory
test, F(1, 23) 173.96, p .001, 2 0.79, showing that young
adults scored higher than older adults and that recognition was
higher than recall. There was also a significant Age Memory
interaction, F(1, 46) 5.79, p .05, 2 0.11, showing that the
age difference in recall was greater than the age difference in
recognition.
One advantage of the present design, in which participants
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
led to greater interference from previous lists. This point was
addressed in Experiments 2 and 3 by reducing the number of
words to be encoded. One other possible concern in Experiment 1
stems from the fact that participants were given only 1 min for
recall, whereas recognition was unpaced; might this have penal-
ized the older participants in particular? The mean number of
words recalled by the older adults was 5.8 (SD 2.0); 1 min is
sufficient time to write down at least 10 words (young participants
recalled 9.8 words on average, with a range of two to 18; the range
for old participants was zero to 14). In addition, most participants
stopped writing after 30 45 s, and no one complained that they
needed extra time. Nonetheless, it is possible that older partici-
pants felt under time pressure, so longer recall times were used in

attempted to recall and recognize the same lists of words, is that it the next two studies. Finally, cross-sectional experiments are al-
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

is possible to calculate conditional recall probabilities for specific
words that were later recognized. Given that a word is correctly
recognized, what is the probability that it was also recalled, and are
there age-group differences in these probabilities? The overall
conditional probabilities for recall given recognition are 0.59 for
the young group and 0.36 for the old group, a highly significant
difference, t(46) 5.65, p .001. It is clear from these data that
the ability to recall recognized words is substantially poorer in
older than in younger adults, despite the fact that recognition levels
themselves did not differ markedly.
However, it is still possible that ceiling effects mask group
difference in recognition scores; for example, five younger and
three older participants had hit rates of 0.89 or higher. To over-
come this possible problem and to equate recognition scores be-
tween the groups, we repeated the analyses after removing the six
highest performing younger adults and the six lowest performing
older adults, based on overall accuracy (hitsfalse alarms). Table
1 shows that recognition hit rates were now slightly greater in the
old group (0.80 vs. 0.76) and that the corrected recognition scores
were virtually identical in the two groups (0.62 and 0.61 for young
and old participants respectively). Consistent with the full data set,
the 2-way ANOVA comparing age group and memory test yielded
a main effect of memory test, F(1, 34) 156.08, p .001, 2 intentional learning and incidental deep encoding, again with sub-
0.821, showing that recognition was higher than recall. There is a
trend toward an effect of age, F(1, 34) 3.09, p .09, but a
significant Age Memory interaction, F(1, 34) 15.62, p
.001, 2 0.315, signifying an age difference in recall despite the
elimination of the age difference in recognition. This was sup-
ported by the tests of simple effects; t(34) 3.66, p .001, and
t(34) 1.0, for recall and recognition, respectively.
Discussion
These data confirm the claim that age-related decrements in
recall are considerably greater than age-related decrements in
recognition memory. When we eliminated the difference in rec-
ognition while also removing the possibility of ceiling and floor
effects, the differences in recall were still substantial. These data
thus contradict the suggestion that ceiling effects in recognition
have masked the true picture of parallel declines in recall and
recognition with age. Although there are disproportionate deficits
in recall, small age-related differences were still present in the
recognition data. It is thus possible that the study design led to
decreased recognition scores for the older adults owing to the large
number of lists they were required to remember, and this may have
ways vulnerable to the concern that some other factor apart from
the age difference is at least partly responsible for the results. We
argue that the present two samples were comparable in terms of
education, health, occupation, and socioeconomic status (see Par-
ticipants section); however, the point is discussed more fully in the
General Discussion. Experiments 2 and 3 were originally designed
in part to explore age-related differences in encoding strategies,
but the results are reported here in the context of differences
between recall and recognition.
Experiment 2
Experiment 2 retained the feature of having younger and older
participants recall and then recognize the same lists of words, but
reduced the number of study lists to two in the expectation that this
would reduce the age difference in recognition scores. The exper-
iment was also designed to examine age differences in memory
following an incidental deep encoding task compared with an
intentional learning task; previous work by Troyer, Hfliger,
Cadieux, and Craik (2006) had shown that a deep processing task
at encoding had the effect of eliminating age differences in rec-
ognition. In this study we therefore compared two encoding types:
sequent recall and recognition tests on the same word lists.
Method
Participants. The study included 25 younger adults (17 fe-
males), aged 18 25 years and 28 older adults (16 females), aged
60 80 years. One young male participant was excluded based on
performance (16% correct on the recognition test) and four older
participants were also excluded (one male, three female), one for
extremely low performance (zero items recalled), and three for
failing to complete the task. The remaining samples were thus 24
in each age group; mean ages were 20.9 years and 70.0 years for
the young and old groups, respectively. As in Experiment 1,
participants were drawn from the University of Toronto under-
graduate subject pool and the University of Toronto adult volun-
teer pool. Younger and older adults had completed 14.7 and 15.7
years of education, respectively. Regarding occupation, all of the
younger participants were university students. In the older group,
21 had worked in professional occupations and three had worked
in secretarial/technical positions; 21 of the 24 were now retired.
With regard to health status, 21 of the younger participants were on
no regular medications, of the remaining three, two were taking
 RECALL, RECOGNITION, AND AGING 905

birth control pills and one was taking medication for an ADHD
condition. In the older group, only two participants were taking no
regular medications; 15 were taking preventative medications for
potential or actual circulatory problems, six for arthritis, five for
cholesterol, four for depression or anxiety, and two for asthma.
Mean scores on the 10-point self-rated health scale were 8.0 for the
young group (n 22) and 7.8 for the old group, t(44) 1.0.
Materials. Two 18-word study lists were used in the experi-
ment plus a list of 144 words for the recognition test, making a
total of 180 common concrete nouns. We used the Cattell Culture
Fair Intelligence Test (Cattell & Cattell, 1960) and the alpha span
task (Craik, 1986) to assess nonverbal IQ and working memory
capacity, respectively.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
sizable age-related decrements in recall. We conducted a 2 2
2 mixed-design ANOVA including Encoding Task (deep, learn)
Memory Test Type (recall, recognition; both within-subject vari-
ables) Age (young, old). This analysis yielded main effects of
age, F(1, 46) 4.49, p .05, 2 0.089, and test type, F(1,
46) 294.67, p .001, 2 0.865, demonstrating that younger
adults performed better overall than older adults and that recogni-
tion scores were higher than recall scores. The encoding task main
effect was not significant, but the Encoding Task Test Type and
Age Test Type interactions were both significant; F(1, 46)
14.47, p .001, 2 0.239, and F(1, 46) 18.95, p .001, 2
0.292, respectively. Table 2 shows that the Encoding Task Test
Type interaction reflects the finding that deep encoding was su-

Procedure. Participants were first asked to attend to one of

perior to intentional learning for recognition performance, but
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

two (counterbalanced) lists of 18 words (displayed serially on a

computer monitor at a rate of 4 s per word) and to either perform
a deep encoding task (Indicate for each word whether it is
something that is pleasant or unpleasant to you) or to simply
memorize it for a forthcoming memory test. Immediately follow-
ing the encoding task, participants were asked to count backward
by 3 s for 30 s (to eliminate recency effects) and were then given
up to 3 min to write down all words they could recall. They then
performed the second encoding task and recall test. Following both
recall tests, they performed a self-paced recognition memory test
in which they were asked to identify those words that had previ-
ously appeared on the encoding lists from a total of 180 serially
presented words. Finally, participants completed the Cattell Cul-
ture Fair Intelligence Test which tests nonverbal IQ through a
series of visual problem solving tasks. The alpha span task was
then given; short lists of words are read aloud and the participant
must repeat the words back in correct alphabetical order. Two lists
are provided at each list length, progressing from two to eight
words per list, and the task ends when neither list at a particular
level is correctly recalled. The score taken was the total number of
words recalled in the correct position.
Results
Table 2 shows the means for each condition as a function of age,
encoding task and memory type. In this study, age differences in
recognition memory were small to nonexistent, but there were still
intentional learning was somewhat superior for recall. In addition,
younger adults performed significantly better than older adults on
recall whereas there were no age differences on the recognition
test. Using t tests to further clarify these effects, younger adults
showed an advantage over older adults on both deep and memo-
rized recall tasks, t(46) 4.22, p .001, t(46) 2.36, p .05,
respectively, whereas there were no significant differences be-
tween the groups on the recognition tests, t(46) 0.69, p .49,
t(46 0.18, p .86, respectively). Age-adjusted scores on the
Cattell Test were 27.5 and 25.6 for younger and older participants,
respectively, t(46) 1.44, p .16, and scores on the alpha span
test were 29.9 and 23.9 for younger and older adults, respectively,
t(46) 3.04, p .01. Thus, the age groups were equivalent on the
Cattell measure of fluid intelligence, but younger participants were
superior on verbal working memory.
The overall conditional probability for recall given recognition
was 0.56 for the young group and 0.43 for the old group following
deep encoding, and 0.62 for the young and 0.47 for the old group
following intentional learning, a significant difference for both
deep and intentional learning conditions, t(46) 3.48, p .005,
t(46) 2.81, p .01, respectively. It is clear from these data that
the ability to recall recognized words is substantially poorer in
older than in younger adults, despite the fact that recognition levels
themselves did not differ; the mean corrected recognition scores
were 0.71 and 0.70 for the young and older groups, respectively.

Table 2
Experiment 2: Probabilities of Recall and Recognition as a Function of Age and Encoding Type for the Full Data Set

Recognition
n Recall Hits False alarms Hits false alarms RC|RG

Full data set

Youngdeep 24 .51 (.15) .82 (.10) .07 (.08) .76 (.11) .55 (.12)
Younglearn 24 .52 (.18) .74 (.17) .07 (.08) .67 (.17) .65 (.18)
Olddeep 24 .35 (.12) .82 (.15) .09 (.08) .73 (.15) .41 (.16)
Oldlearn 24 .40 (.17) .77 (.19) .09 (.08) .68 (.19) .45 (.17)
Split data set
Younghigh 12 .60 (.12) .86 (.07) .04 (.03) .81 (.06) .60 (.11)
Younglow 12 .44 (.08) .71 (.10) .09 (.10) .61 (.07) .59 (.13)
Oldhigh 12 .44 (.12) .92 (.06) .08 (.06) .82 (.08) .48 (.13)
Oldlow 12 .32 (.11) .69 (.15) .11 (.10) .58 (.11) .43 (.13)
Note. RC|RG column refers to the probability of recalling items given recognition. Data are also included for the partial data set, combined across
encoding conditions. Mean probabilities are shown in bold type; standard deviations are in parentheses.
 906 DANCKERT AND CRAIK
To address concerns that the interaction between age and test
type may reflect a ceiling effect in young recognition scores, we
split the data into high and low performing groups based on the
results of the recognition tests. To accomplish this, we calculated
each participants mean recall and recognition scores collapsed
over deep and learn conditions, and then split each age group into
the 12 highest and 12 lowest scorers on the recognition test (hits
false alarms score). The resulting means are shown in Table 2. The
recognition hit rates for the low groups are 0.61 and 0.58 for young
and old participants, respectively, well below ceiling. An ANOVA
on all recall and adjusted recognition scores in Table 2 (both low
and high groups) showed significant effects of performance (high,
low), F(1, 44) 55.52, p .001, 2 0.558, memory type
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
(recall, recognition), F(1, 44) 350.1, p .001, 2 0.888, and
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
age, F(1, 44) 9.71, p .005, 2 0.181, signifying higher
scores for high groups, recognition, and younger participants,
respectively. The Age Memory Type interaction was reliable,
F(1, 44) 22.5, p .001, 2 0.339, but the three-way
interaction between age, test type, and performance was not, F(1,
44) 2.14, p .15, 2 .05, showing again that recall scores fell
more than recognition scores from young to old participants, and
that this effect was found in both high and low subsets of the data.
Finally, the Memory Type Performance interaction was reliable,
F(1, 44) 8.51, p .01, 2 0.162, reflecting the fact that
recognition scores fell more than recall scores from high to low
subsets. A further ANOVA on the low subsets only showed that
the Memory Type Age Contrast was again significant, F(1,
22) 4.56, p .05, 2 0.172. Subsequent t tests showed that
there was a significant effect of age on recall scores, t(22) 3.13,
p .005, whereas the effect of age on recognition was nonsignif-
icant, t(22) 0.83, p .42.
Finally, the values of recall given recognition shown in Table 2
also showed reliable age differences in favor of the younger
participants, t(22) 2.42, p .05 for the high group, and t(22)
2.95, p .01 for the low group.
Discussion
With a simpler design, we found equivalent recognition scores
in the two age groups. We also ensured that ceiling effects in the
young recognition scores could not be masking age-related differ-
ences in recognition by splitting the data based on performance
and looking at both higher and lower performing subjects. The
interaction between age and memory test was found in both
subsets, despite the fact that adjusted recognition scores were in
the region of 0.60 for the lower subset. The conditional probabil-
ities of recall given recognition were also significantly smaller for
the older participants. The significant Encoding Task Test Type
interaction shown in Table 2 probably reflects the fact that inten-
tional learning promotes associations and organization, which is
better for subsequent recall, whereas deep encoding encourages
individual item encoding, which is compatible with recognition
testing. The final experiment attempted to constrain encoding
strategies to reduce any age-related differences in this respect.
Otherwise the design generally replicated the design of Experi-
ment 2.
Experiment 3
This experiment provided two optimal techniques for learning
word lists, including one that encouraged organization and one that
focused attention on each word individuallysimilar to a deep
encoding task, albeit with intentional learning. These two tech-
niques were suggested to different groups of younger and older
adults, and the learning phase was followed first by recall and then
by a recognition test for the same list of words. Participants were
given a brief practice session on the provided technique. We
expected that this manipulation would increase the consistency of
the method used for memorization across participants.
Method
Participants. Participants included 41 younger adults, rang-
ing from 18 26 years and 40 older adults aged from 65 81 years.
Participants were drawn from the University of Toronto under-
graduate subject pool and the adult volunteer pool. The data from
one older adult was removed from the study for very poor perfor-
mance (one item recalled) and one younger participant was re-
moved for failure to follow instructions. The mean age of the
young adult group (n 40, F:M 24:16) was 20.7 years, and the
mean age of the old adult group (n 39, F:M 32:7) was 72.8
years. The average number of years of education was 14.1 years
for the young participants and 16.3 for the older participants. With
respect to occupational status, all of the younger participants were
students at the University of Toronto. In the older group, 33 were
now retired and six were semi-retired; their occupations included
28 professional positions and 11 secretarial/technical positions. In
terms of health data, 32 of the younger participants reported no
regular medications; the remainder reported being on birth control
pills (three), medications for chronic pain (three), for a skin con-
dition (one), and treatment for a cyst (one). In the older group, four
were on no regular medications; of the remainder, there were 16
cases of treatment for blood pressure and circulatory problems, 15
for arthritis, 13 for cholesterol, 8 for depression/anxiety, and 6 for
bone disease. The average scores on the 10-point self-rated health
scale were 7.3 for young and 8.0 for old, t(77) 2.36, p .02.
Thus, on the face of it, members of the older group were in
significantly better health according to their own assessments.
It should be noted, however, that many older adults commented
that they rated their health relative to their own age group, so it
would not be correct to assume that there was an absolute
benefit to the older group. Within each age group, half of the
participants were given one type of encoding task and half the
other type.
Materials. As in Experiment 2, two lists of 18 words were
used as study materials, with an additional list of 10 words used for
the practice session. The recognition list again contained the 36
target words plus 144 distracters. All words were drawn randomly
from a set of 190 words.
Procedure. The task was very similar to that in Experiment 2
with the following exceptions. At encoding, participants were told
that they should attempt to remember the items for a later memory test
and were offered one of two memorization techniques (counterbal-
anced across subjects). The first technique was to memorize the
items by grouping them together in some way (e.g., by forming a
story containing all of them; Grouped), the second was to
memorize items individually, (e.g., think about whether it is rele-
 RECALL, RECOGNITION, AND AGING 907

vant to you or picture the item; Individual). A short practice list
of 10 words was provided before they continued on to the two
study/recall task sessions (both using the same memorization tech-
nique). Following both encoding and recall sessions, participants
performed the Cattell Culture Fair Test. Participants then per-
formed the recognition test in a self-paced fashion and finally were
given the alpha span test.
Results
Table 3 shows that there were no marked differences between
the two encoding tasks in either recall or recognition scores.
Recognition scores (hits false alarms) were again very similar
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
but the younger adults were superior on a test of verbal working
memory.
As in Experiment 2, we again split the groups based on their
performance on the recognition memory test to ensure that ceiling
effects were not responsible for the findings. Taking the lowest 15
performers in each of the 4 groups resulted in matched corrected
recognition scores of 0.71. Analyses of these matched groups
showed a significant main effect of memory test, F(1, 56) 250.5,
p .001, 2 0.82, and a marginally significant effect of age,
F(1, 56) 3.4, p .07, 2 0.06, with higher performance
overall on the recognition test and in younger participants. The
Memory Test Age interaction was also significant F(1, 56)
21.6, p .001, 2 0.28, with younger adults outperforming

between younger and older groups, but recall scores showed an

older adults on the recall test but not on the recognition test. The
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

age-related advantage to younger adults of 15%, over all. We

conducted a 2 2 2 mixed-design ANOVA that included Age
(young, old) x Encoding Task (grouped, individual) x Memory
Test Type (recall, recognition). This analysis yielded main effects
of age, F(1, 75) 5.9, p .05, 2 0.07, and test type, F(1,
75) 388.35, p .001, 2 0.838, demonstrating that younger
adults performed better than older adults and that recognition
scores were higher than recall scores. The encoding task main
effect was not significant, F(1, 75) 0.44, p .5; however the
Encoding Task Age interaction was marginally significant, F(1,
75) 3.4, p .07, probably reflecting the boost in performance
for older adults on the individual encoding task for both tests that
the younger adults did not experience. The Memory Test Age
interaction was significant, F(1, 75) 29.1, p .001, 2 0.28;
older adults performed reliably less well on recall than younger
adults whereas they performed equivalently on the recognition test.
Using simple effects to further disambiguate these results, younger
adults performed better than older adults on grouped items during
recall, t(37) 4.5, p .001, whereas no age difference was found
on the recognition test, t(37 1.4, p .65. This pattern was
replicated for the individual item task: recall, t(38) 2.3, p .05;
recognition, t(38) 1.1, p .26. The age-adjusted scores for
Cattell Culture Fair Intelligence test were 26.2 and 27.3 for
younger and older adults, respectively, t(77) 0.99, p .32, and
scores on Alpha Span were 27.7 and 20.3 for younger and older
adults, respectively, t(77) 3.91, p .001. Thus again the groups
were equivalent on the age-adjusted measure of fluid intelligence,
simple effects showed that older adults performed less well than
younger adults for recall on the grouped encoding task, t(28)
3.9, p .001, and showed a trend in the same direction for the
individually encoded task, t(28) 1.9, p .07. Again, there were
no differences in recognition for either grouped, t(28) 0.2, p
.83 or for individual task condition, t(28) 1.4, p .16 across the
age groups. The overall conditional probability for recall given
recognition was 0.66 for the young group and 0.49 for the old
group, a highly significant difference, t(77) 5.40, p .001.
Discussion
Once again, these data support the idea that older adults are
more impaired on recall tests than on recognition tests, and that
ceiling effects in recognition are not driving the Age Memory
Test interaction. Providing participants with consistent memoriza-
tion techniques in the present experiment had little effect on the
overall pattern of results. There was a boost overall in both young
and old groups when they were provided specific techniques, as
compared to the free learning condition in Experiment 2 in which
no further aids were provided (a jump from .74 to .81 on recall for
younger adults and .67 to .77 on recognition accuracy, and an
increase from .77 to .87 on recall for older adults and .68 to .82 on
recognition). Taken together, the three experiments show the ro-
bust replicability of the finding that recall performance declines
more than recognition performance from young to older adulthood,

Table 3
Experiment 3: Probabilities of Recall and Recognition as a Function of Age and Encoding Type for Both Full and Partial Data Sets

Recognition
n Recall Hits False alarms Hits false alarms RC|RG

Full Data Set

Younggrouped 20 .58 (.16) .81 (.11) .04 (.06) .77 (.15) .70 (.14)
Youngindividual 20 .52 (.12) .81 (13) .04 (.05) .77 (.15) .64 (.14)
Oldgrouped 19 .36 (.13) .85 (.11) .10 (.11) .75 (.16) .48 (.18)
Oldindividual 20 .43 (.11) .89 (.10) .07 (.07) .82 (.13) .50 (.13)
Lowest performers
Younggrouped 15 .52 (.14) .77 (.10) .05 (.06) .71 (.13) .66 (.13)
Youngindividual 15 .51 (.14) .76 (.11) .05 (.06) .71 (.13) .67 (.14)
Oldgrouped 15 .34 (12) .82 (.11) .12 (.12) .71 (.15) .47 (.19)
Oldindividual 15 .42 (.12) .87 (.10) .09 (.07) .77 (.13) .50 (.15)
Note. RC|RG column refers to the probability of recalling items given recognition. Mean probabilities are shown in bold type; standard deviations are
in parentheses.
 908 DANCKERT AND CRAIK
and that this result holds under a variety of encoding manipulations
and with all evidence of ceiling effects removed.
General Discussion
The purpose of the preceding experiments was to shed further
light on relative performance levels on recall and recognition tests
of verbal material in younger and older adults. Many older adults
complain about difficulties with recall, especially with highly
specific information such as names, whereas the ability to recog-
nize wanted items in a recognition test is typically less problematic
for them. This type of anecdotal evidence is in line with Craiks
(1983, 1986) suggestion that recall requires self-initiated process-
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
ing which becomes less effective with increasing age in adulthood,
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
and with findings that the familiarity component of recognition is
relatively unimpaired by the aging process, thereby permitting
older adults to perform virtually as well as younger adults on
recognition tests of item memory (Jennings & Jacoby, 1993,
1997). These analyses are also in line with some results in the
literature (Craik & McDowd, 1987; Schonfield & Robertson,
1966) but not with others (Baddeley, 1996). In addition, Uttl and
colleagues (2007) have called attention to the likelihood of ceiling
effects in many recognition tasks performed by younger partici-
pants.
Using the somewhat unorthodox technique of giving partici-
pants both a recall test and a recognition test successively on the
same words in three experiments, we were able to show consis-
tently that age-related decrements were larger in recall than in
recognition. This conclusion followed from the overall analyses
based on the means shown in Tables 13 and from analyses of
recall levels contingent upon successful recognition. Addressing
Uttl and colleagues (2007) concerns about ceiling effects in
recognition in young adults, we either matched participants in such
a way as to remove the highest scoring individuals or ran data on
the lower performing groups. We thereby removed the potential
for ceiling effects without any differences in the overall findings.
The unequivocal conclusionat least for these types of partici-
pants, materials, and testsis that age-related decrements are
greater in recall than in recognition memory.
One factor that may qualify this general conclusion is the extent
to which a specific test of recognition memory involves processes
of recollection as opposed to familiarity. We argue that the finding
of well-maintained recognition memory in older adults depends
largely on unimpaired familiarity, whereas recollection does show
age-related losses. It follows that age-related declines in recogni-
tion should be found in recognition paradigms in which, for
example, recollection of specific encoding contexts is a salient
feature.
The procedure of giving participants two successive tests on the
same materials is not entirely novel (e.g., Tulving, 1974; Yoneli-
nas et al., 2002) but is unusual. In fact, the method gave few
problems of analysis and interpretation: In unpublished data, we
have found that when the order of recall and recognition was
counterbalanced, both recall and recognition showed higher levels
of performance when tested second, but both improved by the
same relatively small amount. In greater detail, the experiment was
one similar to Experiment 1 in the current series, with 20 older and
20 younger participants being presented with 10 lists of 20 words.
Each list was followed by 30 s of interference, and then by either
recall for 60 s or a recognition test consisting of 20 targets plus 20
distracters; the alternative test (i.e., recognition or recall) for that
list was then given immediately. Recall levels were 0.44 and 0.23
for younger and older groups, respectively, and corrected recog-
nition scores (hits minus false alarms) were 0.82 and 0.78, respec-
tively. When the recognition test was first, recall scores increased
by 0.06 in the young group and by 0.02 in the older group. When
recall was first, recognition increased by 0.04 in the younger group
and by 0.05 in the older group. Thus, the second test in each trial
did benefit slightly from performance on the first test, but there
were no interactions with age in this respect. It is also worth noting
that tests for recall and recognition were both given immediately
after list presentation in this experiment, yet gave the same pattern
of results as the current experiments. That is, the longer retention
interval for recognition than for recall in the current experiments
did not seem to be crucial in shaping the pattern of results. The
method of successive testing may therefore be recommended for
use in studies of memory differences in a variety of developmental
and neuropsychological situations in which it is important to
contrast relative differences in recall and recognition.
As a comment on the samples of participants involved in the
present experiments, it should be noted that the young adults were
all university students, whereas the older adults were mostly re-
tired individuals, living in the community, who volunteer to par-
ticipate in psychological studies, and who travel in to the univer-
sity to do so. As in many studies of cognitive aging, there are
therefore a number of differences between the groups apart from
their differences in age, and caution should be observed in gener-
alizing the results to entire populations. On the other hand, we
believe that our samples were reasonably well matched. The ma-
jority of the older participants had worked in professional occu-
pational or skilled trades and it is likely that the younger adults will
go on to follow similar types of work. In this sense the groups were
at least potentially well matched in terms of educational level,
socioeconomic factors, and lifestyle. There is a clear mismatch,
however, in terms of medication; most of our younger adults were
not taking regular medication whereas 89% of the older adults
were taking at least one medication. This does not mean that the
older adults were chronically sick, however. Many of the medica-
tion are to guard against possible health problems (e.g., high blood
pressure, cholesterol buildup, osteoporosis, prostate enlargement)
and have no deleterious effects on cognitive performance as far as
we know. In fact there was no evidence of poorer health in our
older groups from the self-rated health assessments; the only
significant difference was in favor of better health in the older
group (Experiment 3). One remaining factor to note is that both
age group samples in the present study were drawn from better
educated, upper socioeconomic populations. We know of no the-
oretical reason why a different result should be expected in other
socioeconomic populations, yet for the moment caution should be
observed in generalizing to other groups of younger and older
adults.
As a final comment, given the growing interest in relating
cognitive processes to underlying neural structures and processes,
it would be fruitful to link the present age-related differences in
recall and recognition to underlying brain changes with age. Spe-
cifically, it would be interesting to establish whether aging typi-
cally affects those brain areas associated with recall more than
those associated with recognition. With regard to the brain corre-
 RECALL, RECOGNITION, AND AGING
lates of success on these two types of memory task, Wheeler,
Stuss, and Tulving (1995) reviewed evidence to show that frontal
lobe damage was associated with much greater impairments in
recall than in recognition. Second, Aggleton and Brown (1999)
presented results in support of the view that the hippocampus
supports episodic recall but is not required for recognition judg-
ments. Third, the medial temporal lobe cortex (including entorhi-
nal, perirhinal, and parahippocampal regions) has been associated
with the familiarity component of recognition judgments (Bowles
et al., 2007; Norman & OReilly, 2003). Regarding studies of brain
changes in older adults, Raz and colleagues (2005) have presented
findings showing that healthy aging is associated with substantial
declines in regional brain volumes of the hippocampus and frontal
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
cortex, but minimal age-related changes in the entorhinal cortex.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Complementing these findings, Yonelinas and colleagues (2007)
examined 157 participants aged between 65 and 80 years and
found that performance on recall and recognition tests was pre-
dicted by hippocampal and entorhinal volumes, respectively. They
also found that hippocampal volume declined with age whereas
entorhinal cortex volume was relatively unaffected by the aging
process. Current findings from neuroanatomy and from the cog-
nitive neuroscience of aging are thus in good agreement with the
present results to yield the overall conclusion that normal aging is
associated with substantial declines in volume of the hippocampus
and frontal brain areas, but negligible changes in entorhinal cortex;
in turn, this pattern of decline and maintenance is associated
respectively with an age-related decline in recall but relative
maintenance of recognition.
References
Aggleton, J. P., & Brown, M. W. (1999). Episodic memory, amnesia, and
the hippocampal-anterior thalamic axis. Behavioral and Brain Sciences,
22, 425 489. doi:10.1017/S0140525X99002034
Baddeley, A. D. (1996). Applying the psychology of memory to clinical
problems. In D. Herrmann, C. Hertzog, P. Hertel, M. K. Johnson, & C.
McEvoy (Eds.), Basic and Applied Memory Research: Theory in Con-
text (vol. 1, pp. 195219). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Baddeley, A. D., Emslie, H., & Nimmo-Smith, I. (1994). Doors and
people: A test of visual and verbal recall and recognition. Bury St.
Edmunds, UK: Thames Valley Test Company.
Bowles, B., Crupi, C., Mirsattari, S. M., Pigott, S. E., Parrent, A. G.,
Pruessner, J. C. . . . Khler, S. (2007). Impaired familiarity with
preserved recollection after anterior temporal-lobe resection that spares
the hippocampus. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
USA, 104, 1638216387. doi:10.1073/pnas.0705273104
Cattell, R. B., & Cattell, A. K. S. (1960). Culture Fair Intelligence Test,
Scale 2. Champaign, IL: Institute for Personality and Ability Testing.
Craik, F. I. M. (1983). On the transfer of information from temporary to
permanent memory. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,
London, Series B, 302, 341359.
Craik, F. I. M. (1986). A functional account of age differences in memory.
In F. Klix & H. Hagendorf (Eds.), Human memory and cognitive
capabilities, mechanisms and performances (pp. 409 422). North-
Holland, The Netherlands: Elsevier.
Craik, F. I. M., & McDowd, J. M. (1987). Age differences in recall and
recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory,
and Cognition, 13, 474 479. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.13.3.474
909
Jacoby, L. L., Toth, J. P., & Yonelinas, A. P. (1993). Separating conscious
and unconscious influences of memory: Measuring recollection. Journal
of Experimental Psychology: General, 122, 139 154. doi:10.1037/0096-
3445.122.2.139
Jennings, J. M., & Jacoby, L. L. (1993). Automatic versus intentional uses
of memory: Aging, attention, and control. Psychology and Aging, 8,
283293. doi:10.1037/0882-7974.8.2.283
Jennings, J. M., & Jacoby, L. L. (1997). An opposition procedure for
detecting age-related deficits in recollection: Telling effects of repeti-
tion. Psychology and Aging, 12, 352361. doi:10.1037/0882-7974.12.2
.352
Kopelman, M. D., Bright, P., Buckman, J., Fradera, A., Yoshimasu, H.,
Jacobson, C., & Colchester, A. C. F. (2007). Recall and recognition
memory in amnesia: Patients with hippocampal, medial temporal, tem-
poral lobe or frontal pathology. Neuropsychologia, 45, 12321246.
doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.10.005
Kucera, H., & Francis, W. N. (1967). Computational Analysis of Present-
day American English. Providence, RI: Brown University Press.
Mandler, G. (1980). Recognizing: The judgment of previous occurrence.
Psychological Review, 87, 252271. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.87.3.252
Norman, K. A., & OReilly, R. C. (2003). Modeling hippocampal and
neocortical contributions to recognition memory: A complementary-
learning-systems approach. Psychological Review, 110, 611 646. doi:
10.1037/0033-295X.110.4.611
Park, D. C., Lautenschlager, G., Hedden, T., Davidson, N. S., Smith, A. D.,
& Smith, P. K. (2002). Models of visuospatial and verbal memory across
the adult life span. Psychology and Aging, 17, 299 320. doi:10.1037/
0882-7974.17.2.299
Raz, N., Lindenberger, U., Rodrigue, K. M., Kennedy, K. M., Head, D.,
Williamson, A., Acker, J. D. (2005). Regional brain changes in aging
healthy adults: General trends, individual differences and modifiers.
Cerebral Cortex, 15, 1676 1689. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhi044
Schonfield, D., & Robertson, B. A. (1966). Memory storage and aging.
Canadian Journal of Psychology, 20, 228 236. doi:10.1037/h0082941
Troyer, A. K., Hfliger, A., Cadieux, M. J., & Craik, F. I. M. (2006). Name
and face learning in older adults: The effects of level of processing,
self-generation, and intention to learn. Journal of Gerontology: Psycho-
logical Sciences, 61, P67P74. doi:10.1093/geronb/61.2.P67
Tulving, E. (1974). Cue-dependent forgetting. American Scientist, 62,
74 82.
Uttl, B., Henry, M., & Baltimore, K. (2007). Are smaller age differences on
old/new recognition versus free recall tests artifacts of easy memory
tests? Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61, 374.
Wheeler, M. A., Stuss, D. T., & Tulving, E. (1995). Toward a theory of
episodic memory: The frontal lobes and autonoetic consciousness. Psy-
chological Bulletin, 121, 331354. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.121.3.331
Yonelinas, A. P., Kroll, N. E. A., Quamme, J. R., Lazzara, M. M., Sauve,
M.-J., Widaman, K. F., & Knight, R. T. (2002). Effects of extensive
temporal lobe damage or mild hypoxia on recollection and familiarity.
Nature Neuroscience, 5, 1236 1241. doi:10.1038/nn961
Yonelinas, A. P., Widaman, K., Mungas, D., Reed, B., Weiner, M. W., &
Chui, H. C. (2007). Memory in the aging brain: Doubly dissociating the
contribution of the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex. Hippocampus,
17, 1134 1140. doi:10.1002/hipo.20341
Zachary, R. A. (1986). Shipley Institute of Living Scale: Revised Manual.
Los Angeles, CA: Western Psychological Services.
Received January 8, 2013
Revision received April 4, 2013
Accepted April 26, 2013