TY - JOUR
T1 - Decomposing Adult Age Differences in Working Memory
AU - Salthouse, Timothy A.
AU - Babcock, Renee L.
PY - 1991/9
Y1 - 1991/9
N2 - Two studies, involving a total of 460 adults between 18 and 87 years of age, were conducted to determine which of several hypothesized processing components was most responsible for age-related declines in working memory functioning. Significant negative correlations between age and measures of working memory (i.e., from -.39 to -.52) were found in both studies, and these relations were substantially attenuated by partialing measures hypothesized to reflect storage capacity, processing efficiency, coordination effectiveness, and simple comparison speed. Because the greatest attenuation of the age relations occurred with measures of simple processing speed, it was suggested that many of the age differences in working memory may be mediated by age-related reductions in the speed of executing elementary operations.
AB - Two studies, involving a total of 460 adults between 18 and 87 years of age, were conducted to determine which of several hypothesized processing components was most responsible for age-related declines in working memory functioning. Significant negative correlations between age and measures of working memory (i.e., from -.39 to -.52) were found in both studies, and these relations were substantially attenuated by partialing measures hypothesized to reflect storage capacity, processing efficiency, coordination effectiveness, and simple comparison speed. Because the greatest attenuation of the age relations occurred with measures of simple processing speed, it was suggested that many of the age differences in working memory may be mediated by age-related reductions in the speed of executing elementary operations.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=58149206091&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1037/0012-1649.27.5.763
DO - 10.1037/0012-1649.27.5.763
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:58149206091
SN - 0012-1649
VL - 27
SP - 763
EP - 776
JO - Developmental Psychology
JF - Developmental Psychology
IS - 5
ER -