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This study investigates the role of aging on story comprehension and recall and also the relationships of these variables to working memory capacity. The research involved two age groups, younger subjects (mean age 21 years) and older subjects (mean age 64 years). Comprehension was defined as the construction of Cognitive- Semantic Structures (C-S S) resulting mainly from the selection and integration of units into ordinal structures implying inferential reasoning. Two reading conditions were distinguished : non-directed reading (with classical instructions) and directed reading involving the verification of statements leading the subject to the construction of C-S S. Results show that reading condition affected reading time, but did not affect comprehension or recall scores. No interaction was observed between reading condition and age. Consequently, in each age group, new sub-groups were formed on the basis of the comprehension scores. Our hypothesis was confirmed ; comprehension and recall scores were lower in the older group than in the younger group. The relationship between recall and comprehension was modulated as a function of age. In young subjects, recall increased in a systematic way as a function of comprehension scores. In older subjects, recall was higher for subjects who achieved better comprehension scores, but the recall improvement due to better comprehension was less than for young subjects. This result is interpreted in terms of cumulated deficits concerning comprehension, storage and retrieval processes involved in recall. The capacity of working memory was measured with a reading span test (first version). No difference was observed between mean reading span for younger and older subjects. For the younger subjects, reading span did not correlate with comprehension or recall scores. For the older subjects, reading span did not correlate with comprehension scores but correlated with recall scores. These results are discussed, taking into consideration the appropriateness of the reading span test first version to measure the capacity of working memory on both processing and storage functions.
