Goal-directed remembering in older adults

ABSTRACT

Compared to younger adults, older adults show a reduced difference in memory between items they are directed to remember and items they are directed to forget. This effect may result from increased processing of goal-irrelevant information in aging. In contrast, healthy older adults are often able to selectively remember valuable information, suggesting preservation of goal-directed encoding in aging. Here, we examined how value may differentially affect directed-forgetting and memory for irrelevant details for younger and older adults in a value-directed remembering task. In Experiment 1, participants studied words paired with a directed-forgetting cue and a point-value they earned for later recognition. Participants’ memory was then tested, either after an 8-min or 24-hr retention interval. In Experiment 2 words were presented in two colors and the recognition test assessed whether the participant could retrieve the incidentally-presented point value and the color of each recognized words. In both experiments, older and younger adults displayed a comparable ability to selectively encode valuable items. However, older adults showed a reduced directed-forgetting effect compared to younger adults that was maintained across the 24-hr retention interval. In Experiment 2, older adults showed both intact directed-forgetting and similar incidental detail retrieval compared to younger adults. These findings suggest that older adults maintained selectivity to value, demonstrating that aging does not impact the differential encoding of valuable information. Furthermore, younger and older adults may be similarly goal-directed in terms of item features to encode, but that instructions to forget presented items are less effective in older adults.

KEYWORDS:

• Aging
• older adult
• memory
• value
• directed-forgetting

Acknowledgments

We thank Hanieh Fahami for assistance with data collection. Preliminary results for Experiment 2 were presented at the 32^nd American Psychological Society Annual Convention, Chicago, IL.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (National Institute on Aging) to A. Castel (R01AG044335) and a grant from the National Science Foundation to B. Knowlton (BCS-2048692).