The role of font size and font style in younger and older adults’ predicted and actual recall performance

ABSTRACT

We examined how font sizes (18pt., 48 pt.) and font styles (regular, italic, bold) influenced younger and older adults’ judgments of learning (JOLs) and recall. In Experiment 1 younger adults gave higher JOLs and obtained higher recall than older adults. However, JOLs and recall varied for both age groups as a function of font size and font style manipulations despite a tendency for both groups to predict higher recall for items in large and in regular and italic styles than for small and bold fonts and achieve higher recall for regular than italic or bold items. No age differences were found in relative accuracy, with near-perfect calibration in absolute accuracy for younger and older adults. Experiment 2 presented a description of Experiment 1 and asked participants to predict recall for the various font size/style combinations. Younger and older adults predicted higher recall for large than small font items, regardless of font style, and higher recall for bold than regular or italic styles, regardless of font size. Memory predictions did not align across experiments, suggesting that memory beliefs combine with processing fluency to affect JOLs and recall.

KEYWORDS:

• Font size
• font style
• judgments of learning
• aging
• recall

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Terry Meacham for creating the computer program used in data collection. We also extend our thanks to the following students for their help with data collection and preparation: Alan Harrison, Barbara Wright, Fatima Iqbal, Brittany Sentell, and Mia Park. Finally, we would like to thank the members of the Huntsville, Alabama chapter of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute for their participation in these experiments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Independent samples t-tests examining younger and older adults’ education levels, health ratings, and scores on the external measures (MCI, AVT, and PCT) revealed significant age-related differences in the education levels achieved by each age group, t(86) = −5.57, p < .001, d = 1.20, 95% CI [−3.15, −1.49], ratings of overall health, t(86) = −2.04, p < .05, d = 0.43, 95% CI [−6.66, −.01], as well as in participants’ AVT scores, t(85) = −2.89, p < .01, d = 0.63, 95% CI [−6.30, −1.17], and PCT scores, t(86) = 5.25, p < .001, d = 1.13, 95% CI [5.54, 12.29]. The MCI ratings did not differ significantly for the two age groups, ps > .05. It remains possible that if we had used a task-specific measure of metamemory rather than a global measure like the MCI, we might have observed age differences, given that the two types of measures sometimes show dissociable effects (e.g., Touron & Hertzog, 2004).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by an Individual Investigator Distinguished Research grant, awarded to Jodi Price from The University of Alabama in Huntsville.