Analyses of adult age differences in associative learning.

Data from a recent project concerned with adult age differences in associative learning were reanalyzed to identify the processes involved in the age-related differences in trial-by-trial performance in this task. A measure reflecting the failure to retain feedback relevant to one's previous response accounted for a large proportion of the age differences in the early trials of associative learning. The speed with which individuals completed simple processing operations also contributed to the age differences both in measures of accuracy (percentage correct) and in measures of feedback retention.