Following Instructions in Working Memory: Do Older Adults Show the Enactment Advantage?

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: In young adults, the ability to verbally recall instructions in working memory is enhanced if the sequences are physically enacted by the participant (self-enactment) or the experimenter (demonstration) during encoding. Here we examine the effects of self-enactment and demonstration at encoding on working memory performance in older and younger adults. METHOD: Fifty young (18-23 years) and 40 older (60-89 years) adults listened to sequences of novel action-object pairs before verbally recalling them in the correct order. There were three different encoding conditions spoken only, spoken + demonstration, and spoken + self-enactment. We included two different levels of difficulty to investigate whether task complexity moderated the effect of encoding condition and whether this differed between age groups. RESULTS: Relative to the spoken only condition, demonstration significantly improved young and older adults' serial recall performance, but self-enactment only enhanced performance in the young adults, and this boost was smaller than the one gained through demonstration. DISCUSSION: Our findings suggest that additional spatial-motoric information is beneficial for older adults when the actions are demonstrated to them, but not when the individual must enact the instructions themselves.