The Impact of Presentation Format on Younger and Older Adults’ Self-Regulated Learning

ABSTRACT

Background/Study Context: Self-regulated learning involves deciding what to study and for how long. Debate surrounds whether individuals’ selections are influenced more by item complexity, point values, or if instead people select in a left-to-right reading order, ignoring item complexity and value. The present study manipulated whether point values and presentation format favored selection of simple or complex Chinese-English pairs to assess the impact on younger and older adults’ selection behaviors.

Methods: One hundred and five younger (M_age = 20.26, SD = 2.38) and 102 older adults (M_age = 70.28, SD = 6.37) participated in the experiment. Participants studied four different 3 × 3 grids (two per trial), each containing three simple, three medium, and three complex Chinese-English vocabulary pairs presented in either a simple-first or complex-first order, depending on condition. Point values were assigned in either a 2–4–8 or 8–4–2 order so that either simple or complex items were favored.

Results: Points did not influence the order in which either age group selected items, whereas presentation format did. Younger and older adults selected more simple or complex items when they appeared in the first column. However, older adults selected and allocated more time to simpler items but recalled less overall than did younger adults. Memory beliefs and working memory capacity predicted study time allocation, but not item selection, behaviors.

Conclusion: Presentation format must be considered when evaluating which theory of self-regulated learning best accounts for younger and older adults’ study behaviors and whether there are age-related differences in self-regulated learning. The results of the present study combine with others to support the importance of also considering the role of external factors (e.g., working memory capacity and memory beliefs) in each age group’s self-regulated learning decisions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Terry Meacham for his programming assistance and the following students for their help with data collection and preparation: Barbara Wright, Michael Mueller, Tiffany Sledge, Shamiria Lindsey, Emma Barr, and Danielle Atkins. Special thanks are due the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) members and community volunteers who enabled us to gain a better understanding of self-regulated learning in older adults.

FUNDING

This research was made possible by a Junior Faculty Distinguished Research grant awarded to Jodi Price by the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Notes

¹ Only 2% of younger adults and 14% of older adults in the Price and Murray (2012) study utilized all their allotted study time when given 60 s per 2 × 3 grid. Thus, to insure that participants in the present study experienced some time pressure, the participants were allotted 60 s per 3 × 3 grid to study items.

² The analysis of selection patterns included a reduced sample of 104 younger and 78 older adults’ data.

³ The conditional recall analyses were also based on a reduced sample of 89 older adults, but all 105 younger adults.

⁴ The analyses of/including WMC have a reduced sample of 98 older adults given that 4 did not complete the measure of WMC.

Additional information

Funding

This research was made possible by a Junior Faculty Distinguished Research grant awarded to Jodi Price by the University of Alabama in Huntsville.