The effects of a face-name mnemonic in young, middle-aged, and elderly adults.

ABSTRACT

A mnemonic for learning name-to-face associations was taught to young, middle-aged, and elderly adults. Recall of names was assessed initially, before participants were introduced to the mnemonic, and after it had been learned. The youngest group recalled the most names overall whereas the oldest group recalled the least; middle-aged participants performed at intermediate levels. Despite this decline in performance with age, all three groups showed significant gains in recall after learning the mnemonic, and the amount of improvement was comparable across groups.