Age Differences in Memory for Names: The Effect of Prelearned Semantic Associations

Previous research has shown that people especially older adults have a special difficulty in learning the names of newly encountered people. This is potentially attributable to the lack of direct link in memory between a face and name. The present experiments investigated whether older and younger adults could use other semantic information about a person (i.e., a mediator) to indirectly link a name to a face. In each of two experiments, older and younger adults prelearned associations between semantic information (character information or occupations) and names. They then attempted to learn links between faces and either the names or semantic information. In the unmediated condition, participants learned only one piece of information (either the name or the semantic information) about each face, whereas in the mediated condition, they learned both the to-be-tested information as well as the mediator (i.e., both the name and the other semantic information). Experiment I showed that, at a simple level, both age groups could use character information (good or bad) to help recognize people's names, given their faces. Experiment 2 showed that knowing the occupation associated with a name helped both age groups to later recall the name associated with a given face.