Ke. Cherry et Mw. Jones, Age-related differences in spatial memory: Effects of structural and organizational context, J GEN PSYCH, 126(1), 1999, pp. 53-73
The authors examined effects of structural and organizational spatial conte
xt on younger and older adults' memory for an arrangement of dollhouse furn
iture pieces. For half of the participants, landmark objects (Experiment 1)
and a floor plan beneath the array (Experiment 2) served as structural con
text during study and replacement. Organizational context was varied by gro
uping items randomly or as 6 rooms in a prototypical house. Two study and r
eplacement trials were given. In Experiment 1, landmark structural, cues im
proved younger adults' performance, whereas both age groups benefited from
the floor plan in Experiment 2. In both experiments, positive effects of or
ganizational context and trial occurred. Higher order interactions further
revealed that structural and organizational context effects varied in size
across trials, suggesting that both age groups used spatial contextual cues
more effectively with practice. Implications of these results for current
views on cognitive compensation in adulthood are discussed.