The proposed research is concerned with the nature and causes of age and individual differences in memory across adulthood. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which person and task variables relate to memory performance of younger and older adults. In order to achieve a more comprehensive assessment of memory competence than has been carried out previously, a battery of experimental memory tasks, as well as with a set of instruments designed to assess everyday memory functioning, will be developed and administered to younger and older adults. In order to develop a conceptual framework of what factors may be better than chronological age in predicting memory competence, pilot data will be collected concerning the ways in which a variety of subject characteristics, including health, social roles and life styles, personality, attitudes and expectations, life experiences and life events, and intelligence test performance relate to memory performance. In order to determine the degree to which previous observations of age deficits in adult memory may be related to the fact that younger subjects typically have been students, who have considerable practice with tasks similar to experimental laboratory tasks, while older subjects typically have been nonstudents, who have not have comparable recent practice with experimental type memory tasks, groups of both students and nonstudents, younger and older adults, will be tested.