Reward motivation more consistently modulates memory for younger compared to older adults in a directed forgetting task.

Remembering and forgetting are both important processes of a healthy memory system, but both processes can show age-related decline. Reward anticipation is effective at improving remembering in both younger and older adults, but little is known about the effects of incentives on forgetting. In four online experiments, we examined whether reward motivation modulates intentional remembering and forgetting in younger and older adults, and systematically varied the presentation of reward cues during encoding to test whether the temporal dynamics of reward anticipation are important for directed forgetting performance. Both age groups showed directed forgetting effects such that participants remembered more items they were instructed to remember than instructed to forget, but across experiments, we found no evidence that reward incentives improved forgetting in either age group. Younger adults consistently exhibited reward-modulated memory across experiments and varying the timing of the reward cue had little impact on performance. Older adults displayed inconsistent effects of reward on memory, only when reward anticipation was elicited closer to the middle of the experimental trial did it enhance memory in this task. Overall, the findings from the current set of experiments indicate that reward anticipation improved memory, but not forgetting, and most consistently for younger adults, compared to older adults. Further, older adults' cognitive performance may be more sensitive to the placement and timing of reward anticipation in the experimental trial perhaps due to the time course of reward anticipation and interactions with the hippocampus that may show age-related change. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Younger and older adults' strategic use of associative memory and metacognitive control when learning foreign vocabulary words of varying importance.

Older adults often face memory deficits in binding unrelated items. However, in situations such as preparing for foreign travel, a learner may be highly motivated to learn the translations of important words (e.g., "money"). In the present study, younger and older adults studied Swahili-English word pairs and judged the importance of knowing each pair if they were traveling to a foreign country. Generally, we expected older adults to display a memory deficit but for both younger and older adults' memory to be driven by the subjective importance of the to-be-learned information. Both younger and older adults' memory was related to their subjective importance ratings, suggesting that both age groups were able to engage in goal-based value-directed remembering. With increased task experience, older adults appeared to utilize a strategic approach in their study of the translations by spending more time studying the items relative to younger adults. Thus, despite associative memory deficits in older age, both younger and older adults can selectively remember subjectively important information such that older adults can effectively remember new vocabulary that is subjectively important and related to their future goals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Take a load off: examining partial and complete cognitive offloading of medication information.

Although cognitive offloading, or the use of physical action to reduce internal cognitive demands, is a commonly used strategy in everyday life, relatively little is known about the conditions that encourage offloading and the memorial consequences of different offloading strategies for performance. Much of the extant work in this domain has focused on laboratory-based tasks consisting of word lists, letter strings, or numerical stimuli and thus makes little contact with real-world scenarios under which engaging in cognitive offloading might be likely. Accordingly, the current work examines offloading choice behavior and potential benefits afforded by offloading health-related information. Experiment 1 tests for internal memory performance for different pieces of missing medication interaction information. Experiment 2 tests internal memory and offloading under full offloading and partial offloading instructions for interaction outcomes that are relatively low severity (e.g., sweating). Experiment 3 extends Experiment 2 by testing offloading behavior and benefit in low-severity, medium-severity (e.g., backache), and high-severity interaction outcomes (e.g., heart attack). Here, we aimed to elucidate the potential benefits afforded by partial offloading and to examine whether there appears to be a preference for choosing to offload (i) difficult-to-remember information across outcomes that vary in severity, as well as (ii) information from more severe interaction outcomes. Results suggest that partial offloading benefits performance compared to relying on internal memory alone, but full offloading is more beneficial to performance than partial offloading.

The effect of external store reliance on actual and predicted value-directed remembering.

We often rely on external devices to store to-be-remembered information in our everyday lives (e.g., writing grocery lists, setting reminders), yet there is limited research about how certain information (i.e., valuable information) may be differentially encoded when we rely on our internal memory versus an external store. Across three preregistered experiments, we examined the effect of relying on an external store on the recall of high-value and low-value information. In Experiments 1a and 1b, we presented participants with words associated with point values and examined mean recall performance during two critical trials in which the external store was not available: (1) a trial in which participants were told that they would have access to an external memory store at test (told-external-store) and (2) a trial in which participants were told that they would not have access to their external store at test (told-no-external-store). In Experiment 2, we explored participants' metacognitive predictions of performance on the recall test. Critically, across all of the experiments, we found that the value effect (i.e., better recall for valuable information) was significantly reduced when individuals were told that they could rely on an external store. The same pattern was present in participant's metacognitive judgements. Together, these results suggest that when relying on external stores, individuals forgo (to some extent, at least) selective encoding by value and that individuals might be aware of this change in strategy.

Remembering proper names as a potential exception to the better-than-average effect in younger and older adults.

People see themselves as better than average in many domains, from leadership skills to driving ability. However, many people-especially older adults-struggle to remember others' names, and many of us are aware of this struggle. Our beliefs about our memory for names may be different from other information; perhaps forgetting names is particularly salient. We asked younger and older adults to rate themselves compared with others their age on several socially desirable traits (e.g., honesty); their overall memory ability; and their specific ability to remember scientific terms, locations, and people's names. Participants demonstrated a better-than-average (BTA) effect in their ratings of most items except their ability to remember names, which both groups rated as approximately the same as others their age. Older adults' ratings of this ability were related to a measure of the social consequences of forgetting another's name, but younger adults' ratings were not. The BTA effect is present in many judgments for both younger and older adults, but people may be more attuned to memory failures when those failures involve social consequences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Memory for Weather Information in Younger and Older Adults: Tests of Verbatim and Gist Memory.

Background/Study Context: Memory for specific, verbatim details tends to decline with age, and reliance on gist-based information increases. However, instructions that direct attention toward certain types of information can benefit memory accuracy for that information. Previous work has examined gist-based and verbatim memory for images, but little work has utilized stimuli that participants may study in their daily lives, such as a weather forecast. METHODS: The current study examined how younger and older adults recall both general, gist-based information and specific, verbatim details of a weather forecast, and whether differences in the task instructions to focus on gist-based information may affect recall. Two study-test cycles with different forecasts were used to determine whether experience with the task may affect performance. RESULTS: While there was no effect of additional gist-based instructions on recall of gist-based information, participants who received the additional instructions recalled fewer verbatim details than those who did not. There were no age-related differences in recall of the gist of the forecast, but younger adults correctly recalled more verbatim details than older adults did. CONCLUSION: Environmental support and use of gist-based processing can allow both younger and older adults to remember information that can be useful in their daily lives. The current study informs future research on prospective memory and memory for everyday information.

Knowing What Others Know: Younger and Older Adults' Perspective-Taking and Memory for Medication Information.

Health-related information can be important to communicate and remember, but we may not understand our own or others' memory abilities. In this study, younger and older adults estimated their performance before and after a cued-recall memory task in which they studied medication : side effect pairs. Participants also estimated the performance of a peer their own age, a medical student, and a person in the other age group (i.e., younger adults estimated older adults' performance and vice versa). In Experiment 1, participants completed four study-test cycles, each with new pairs. In Experiment 2, the same pairs were presented throughout. Overall, participants initially overestimated their memory performance, but after the task, several judgments were closer to participants' actual performance and that of their peers. Thus, people may not initially have accurate representations of how they and others remember health-related information, but these misconceptions may be ameliorated by testing and task experience.

Younger and older adults' associative memory for medication interactions of varying severity.

While older adults face various deficits in binding items in memory, they are often able to remember information that is deemed important. In Experiment 1, we examined how younger and older adults remember medication interactions of varying severity. There were no age differences in overall memory accuracy, but older adults' performance depended on the severity of the interactions (such that the interactions associated with the most severe health outcomes were remembered most accurately) while younger adults' did not. In Experiment 2, a similar task was designed to create interference in memory. Even with this more difficult task there were no age differences in recall accuracy, and both age groups remembered the interactions with the severe outcomes most accurately. These findings suggest that, under certain circumstances, older adults do not face deficits in associative recognition accuracy of information that varies in importance.

Improving Medication Understanding and Adherence Using Principles of Memory and Metacognition: In Press - Policy Insights from Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

More than half of older adults regularly take multiple medications. Rates of medication non-adherence are high, which undermines both patients' health and the economy. Memory and metacognitive factors (such as misplaced confidence) help explain why patients across the lifespan may not understand or follow prescribed regimens. These factors include difficulties in remembering confusing information; patients' and practitioners' potential overconfidence in memory; and misunderstandings about memory. Patients, practitioners, and the public can use these principles to improve memory, enhance understanding, and promote metacognitive accuracy with respect to complex medication information, which may increase the likelihood of adherence.

Younger and older adults' associative memory for social information: The role of information importance.

The ability to associate items in memory is critical for social interactions. Older adults show deficits in remembering associative information but can sometimes remember high-value information. In two experiments, younger and older participants studied faces, names, and occupations that were of differing social value. There were no age differences in the recall of important information in Experiment 1, but age differences were present for less important information. In Experiment 2, when younger adults' encoding time was reduced, age differences were largely absent. These findings are considered in light of value-directed strategies when remembering social associative information. (PsycINFO Database Record

Metacognition and proofreading: the roles of aging, motivation, and interest.

The current study examined younger and older adults' error detection accuracy, prediction calibration, and postdiction calibration on a proofreading task, to determine if age-related differences would be present in this type of common error detection task. Participants were given text passages, and were first asked to predict the percentage of errors they would detect in the passage. They then read the passage and circled errors (which varied in complexity and locality), and made postdictions regarding their performance, before repeating this with another passage and answering a comprehension test of both passages. There were no age-related differences in error detection accuracy, text comprehension, or metacognitive calibration, though participants in both age groups were overconfident overall in their metacognitive judgments. Both groups gave similar ratings of motivation to complete the task. The older adults rated the passages as more interesting than younger adults did, although this level of interest did not appear to influence error-detection performance. The age equivalence in both proofreading ability and calibration suggests that the ability to proofread text passages and the associated metacognitive monitoring used in judging one's own performance are maintained in aging. These age-related similarities persisted when younger adults completed the proofreading tasks on a computer screen, rather than with paper and pencil. The findings provide novel insights regarding the influence that cognitive aging may have on metacognitive accuracy and text processing in an everyday task.

Gist-based memory for prices and "better buys" in younger and older adults.

Ageing typically leads to various memory deficits which results in older adults' tendency to remember more general information and rely on gist memory. The current study examined if younger and older adults could remember which of two comparable grocery items (e.g., two similar but different jams) was paired with a lower price (the "better buy"). Participants studied lists of grocery items and their prices, in which the two items in each category were presented consecutively (Experiment 1), or separated by intervening items (Experiment 2). At test, participants were asked to identify the "better buy" and recall the price of both items. There were negligible age-related differences for the "better buy" in Experiment 1, but age-related differences were present in Experiment 2 when there were greater memory demands involved in comparing the two items. Together, these findings suggest that when price information of two items can be evaluated and compared within a short period of time, older adults can form stable gist-based memory for prices, but that this is impaired with longer delays. We relate the findings to age-related changes in the use of gist and verbatim memory when remembering prices, as well as the associative deficit account of cognitive ageing.