Aging and verbal working memory capacity

Objectives. The development of verbal working memory capacity over time was investigated. xxx Methods. Four different age groups were tested with the new standard computerized version of the reading span test (Van den Noort et al., 2006, 2008). xxx Results. Compared to the young adults, the old adults showed a significant decrease in verbal working memory capacity, a significant slowing down in mental processing, made significantly more intrusion errors, and had no recency-effect. xxx Conclusion. Interestingly, the results show that there are larger age-related effects in short term verbal memory span than was expected on the basis of aging theories so far.