Age is often used to explain performances by older people that may be judged substandard in comparison with those of younger people. To explore age as a possible causal attribution, descriptions of task performances by young (aged 30) and old (aged 70) women were judged by young (N=352) and old (N=96) female subjects on four attributions, i.e., ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck, and on chronological age. The association between endorsement of an age attribution and endorsements of the four attributions were also investigated. Data analyses of two achievement tasks yielded consistent evidence, across judges, that age was more strongly endorsed for the failure of the older rather than the younger performer. Conversely, age was more strongly endorsed for the success of the younger rather than the older person. The interaction effect of stimulus age by outcome was significant for age attribution only. The results suggest that age is used as a causal attribution of some saliency in explaining the differences between young and old performers in both success and failure outcomes. (Author/NRB)