Aging, Memory, and Comprehension

There are changes in the ability to comprehend and remember information with aging. In general, older adults perform more poorly than younger adults at tasks that require knowledge of the information that was actually encountered. However, they can perform as well as or better than younger adults at tasks involving more global levels of understanding, such as in the use ofinformation in a situation model. This increased emphasis on situation models may serve to compensate for deficits at lower levels of processing and may be achieved through more focused selection of situation-defining information, increased dependence on schemas, and a broader generation and use of inferences.