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Older adults have even greater difficulty learning name–face associations than young adults, although many variables reflecting properties of the names have been shown to affect young and older adults' name learning similarly. Older adults' name–face association learning was compared for names with high‐frequency (HF) first syllables versus names with low‐frequency (LF) first syllables. Twenty‐eight adults ages 65 to 80 learned five names with HF first syllables and five names with LF first syllables in association with 10 new faces over repeated testing rounds with feedback. Participants learned more name–face associations when the names had HF first syllables than LF first syllables. Findings indicate that older adults benefit from increased frequency of phonological segments within a word on a task other than word retrieval and are consistent with a theoretical framework that accounts for learning new name–face associations, the effects of linguistic properties of the names, and ageing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Young and older adults performed a visual error detection task in two experiments. In Experiment 1, errors and anomalies were embedded in large, complex visual scenes, and participants were to find them and describe the nature of the identified problems. Young adults found more errors than older adults, a finding unrelated to age differences in near visual acuity or time constraints. Experiment 2 replicated the age difference in error detection using simplified visual scenes containing fewer errors. Results are interpreted as reflecting older adults' decreased ability to form representations for novel information, even though the task did not require the creation of new episodic memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]