Evidence for disproportionate dual-task costs in older adults for episodic but not semantic memory

Previous research demonstrates that older adults are poor at dual tasking, but there is less agreement on whether their decrement is worse than that predicted from single-task performance. This study investigated whether task domain moderates dual-task costs in old age. In two experiments, young and older adults retrieved either previously learned associates (episodic retrieval) or overlearned category members (semantic retrieval) under single or working-memory load conditions, using cued recall (Experiment 1) and recognition (Experiment 2) procedures. In both experiments the proportional costs of dual tasking were age invariant for semantic retrieval but were particularly marked for episodic retrieval, although the size of the age effect was reduced in recognition compared to cued recall. The data suggest that age effects in dual tasking may be domain specific.     

Kripke's Second Paragraph of Philosophical Investigations 201

The received view of Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language is that it fails as an interpretation because, inter alia, it ignores or overlooks what Wittgenstein has to say in the second paragraph of Philosophical Investigations (PI) 201. In this paper, I demonstrate that the paragraph in question is in fact fully accommodated within Kripke's reading, and cannot therefore be reasonably utilised to object to it. In part one I characterise the objection; in part two I explain why it fails; in part three I suggest why commentators might have been motivated to offer it; and in part four I claim that two commentators who have offered it also imply otherwise.