Age, criterion flexibility, and item recognition

ABSTRACT

We examined young and older adults' ability to flexibly adapt response criterion on a recognition test when the probability that a test item had been studied was cued by test color. One word color signaled that the probability of the test item being old was 70% and a second color signaled that the probability of the test item being new was 70%. Young and older adults demonstrated similar levels of criterion shifting in response to color cues. Moreover, although both young and older adults were slowed when test-item color incorrectly predicted test-item status, the extent of slowing did not differ across age group. Putative measures of cognitive control predicted recognition accuracy but not the degree to which criterion changed with test-item color. These results suggest that adaptive criterion shifting does not tax cognitive control or, if it does require effort, may be no more onerous for older than for young adults.

KEYWORDS:

• Aging and memory
• aging and criterion flexibility
• recognition memory and criterion flexibility
• criterion flexibility
• recognition memory
• cognitive control

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a grant from the Pitzer College Research and Awards Committee. The authors thank Edgar Erdfelder for sharing his statistical acumen and Ian Dobbins and two anonymous reviewers for their trenchant comments on an earlier version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. At each query point, including a later one noted below, all participants responded accurately to these questions, indicating that they had knowledge about the contingency between word color and test status.

2. When controlling for age group, the partial correlations for the difference in C values were virtually identical to the bivariate correlations with values of .087 (digits total), .067 (proportional increase in response time on the Trail Making Test), and .048 for NAART errors. The partial correlations for mean d′ were .234 (digits total), −.298 (proportional increase in response times on the Trail Making Test), and −.287 (NAART errors, now significant at p = .014, one-tailed test).

3. We should note that while our study addresses potential age differences in criterion flexibility, it does not address the issue of whether providing external cues to test item status improves recognition accuracy (Konkel et al., 2015) because we did not include no-cue or 50% valid cue conditions.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Pitzer College Research and Awards Committee.