| Accuracy and Speed Feedback: Global and Local Effects on Strategy Use |
2014 |
1855 |
Background/Study Context: Skill acquisition often involves a shift from an effortful algorithm-based strategy to more fluent memory-based performance. Older adults’ slower strategy transitions can be ascribed to both slowed learning and metacognitive... |
| Age differences in memory retrieval shift: Governed by feeling-of-knowing? |
2011 |
2022 |
The noun-pair lookup (NP) task was used to evaluate strategic shift from visual scanning to retrieval. We investigated whether age differences in feeling-of-knowing (FOK) account for older adults' delayed retrieval shift. Participants were randomly a... |
| Age differences in strategic behavior during a computation-based skill acquisition task |
2009 |
1924 |
The development of cognitive skills often involves a transition from an effortful and slow rule-based process to a more fluent memory retrieval process, which occurs with repeated practice on relevant problems (Ackerman & Woltz, 1994; Logan, 1988; Ri... |
| Age differences in strategy shift: Retrieval avoidance or general shift reluctance? |
2013 |
2323 |
Previous studies of metacognitive age differences in skill acquisition strategies have relied exclusively on tasks with a processing shift from an algorithm to retrieval strategy. Older adults’ demonstrated reluctance to shift strategies in such task... |
| Age-related differences in mind-wandering in daily life |
2018 |
3426 |
In recent years, several laboratory studies have indicated that healthy older adults exhibit a reduction in mind-wandering frequency compared with young adults. However, it is unclear if these findings extend to daily life settings. In the current st... |
| Age-related differences in practice effects during reading comprehension: Older adults are slower to shift from computation to retrieval |
2009 |
1583 |
One of the most robust effects in psychology is the finding that practice yields a negatively accelerated decrease in the time required to perform a task. Speed-ups with practice have been shown in a wide range of cognitive tasks, from mental arithme... |
| Age-Related Dissociations in Time-Accuracy Functions for Recognition Memory: Utilizing Semantic Support versus Building New Representations |
2000 |
393 |
Time-accuracy functions were derived for younger and older adults for recognition of line drawings of common objects, words of high imagery values, and figures (i.e., Chinese characters). We found that in the line drawing and word conditions, older a... |
| Aging and memory improvement from semantic clustering: The role of list-presentation format |
2016 |
640 |
The present study examined how the presentation format of the study list influences younger and older adults’ semantic clustering. Spontaneous clustering did not differ between age groups or between an individual-words (presentation of individual stu... |
| Aging ebbs the flow of thought: Adult age differences in mind wandering, executive control, and self-evaluation. |
2013 |
3309 |
Two experiments examined the relations among adult aging, mind wandering, and executive-task performance, following from surprising laboratory findings that older adults report fewer task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) than do younger adults (e.g., Giambr... |
| Aging effects in sequential modulations of poorer-strategy effects during execution of memory strategies |
2017 |
1414 |
In this study, we asked young adults and older adults to encode pairs of words. For each item, they were told which strategy to use, interactive imagery or rote repetition. Data revealed poorer-strategy effects in both young adults and older adults: ... |
| Are item-level strategy shifts abrupt and collective? Age differences in cognitive skill acquisition |
2006 |
1754 |
Item-level analysis allows for the examination of qualitative age and individual differences in skill acquisition, which are obscured when aggregating data across items. In the present study, item-level strategy shifts were generally gradual and vari... |
| Checking it Twice: Age-related Differences in Double Checking during Visual Search |
2010 |
438 |
Visual search is an integral part of functioning in everyday life and a primary component of some occupational tasks. Older adults typically exhibit longer response times on visual search tasks compared to younger adults. Mechanisms proposed as expla... |
| Cognitive skill acquisition and transfer in younger and older adults |
2001 |
1463 |
The acquisition of cognitive skills often depends on 1 of (or a combination of) 2 processes, the execution of an algorithm, and the retrieval of problem instances. This study examined the effects of age and repetition of problem instances on the prod... |
| Cognitive Skill Learning: Age-Related Differences in Strategy Shifts and Speed of Component Operations |
2004 |
1514 |
Younger and older adults solved novel arithmetic problems and reported the strategies used for obtaining solutions. Age deficits were demonstrated in the latencies for computing and retrieving solutions and in the shift from computation to retrieval.... |
| Distinguishing age differences in knowledge, strategy use, and confidence during strategic skill acquisition |
2004 |
4316 |
The authors examined how age differences in strategy selection are related to associative learning deficits and metacognitive variables, including memory ability confidence. In Experiment 1, increases in memory reliance for performance of the noun-pa... |
| Does a time monitoring deficit influence older adults' delayed retrieval shift during skill acquisition? |
2007 |
1432 |
The authors evaluated age-related time-monitoring deficits and their contribution to older adults' reluctance to shift to memory retrieval in the noun-pair lookup (NP) task. Older adults (M = 67 years) showed slower rates of response time (RT) improv... |
| Eye movements and strategy shift in skill acquisition: Adult age differences. |
2011 |
1721 |
Objectives. The current article explores age differences in skill acquisition. We validated strategy self-reports, evaluated whether eye movements may be automatic as well as information seeking, and considered the contribution of eye movements to ag... |
| How often are thoughts metacognitive? Findings from research on self-regulated learning, think-aloud protocols, and mind-wandering |
2018 |
1050 |
Metacognitive monitoring refers to how people evaluate their cognitive performance. An extensive literature examines how accurately individuals engage in monitoring. The question of how often individuals engage in metacognitive monitoring has been la... |
| Judgments of learning are influenced by multiple cues in addition to memory for past test accuracy. |
2013 |
2686 |
When people try to learn new information (e.g., in a school setting), they often have multiple opportunities to study the material. One of the most important things to know is whether people adjust their study behavior on the basis of past success so... |
| Mediator-based encoding strategies in source monitoring in younger and older adults |
2012 |
1442 |
Past research has examined the contribution of mediator-based encoding strategies (interactive imagery and sentence generation) to individual (particularly age-related) differences in associative memory exclusively in the paired-associates paradigm. ... |
| Memory Avoidance by Older Adults: When “Old Dogs” Won’t Perform Their “New Tricks” |
2015 |
405 |
Learning often involves a transition from responding based on an effortful initial strategy to using a faster and easier memory-based strategy. Older adults shift strategy more slowly compared with younger adults. I describe research establishing tha... |
| Metacognitive influences on study time allocation in an associative recognition task: An analysis of adult age differences |
2009 |
1708 |
The current study evaluated a metacognitive account of study time allocation, which argues that metacognitive monitoring of recognition test accuracy and latency influences subsequent strategic control and regulation. The authors examined judgments o... |
| Metacognitive monitoring and strategic behavior in working memory performance: An examination of adult age differences |
2009 |
2823 |
Research indicates that cognitive age differences can be influenced by metacognitive factors. This research has generally focused on simple memory tasks. Age differences in working memory (WM) performance are pronounced, but are typically attributed ... |
| Moderation of older adults’ retrieval reluctance through task instructions and monetary incentives |
2007 |
2228 |
Previous research using a noun-pair lookup task indicates that older adults delay strategy shift from visual scanning to memory retrieval despite adequate learning, and that this "retrieval reluctance" is related to subjective choice factors. Age dif... |
| Older adults' use of metacognitive knowledge in source monitoring: Spared monitoring but impaired control. |
2011 |
2583 |
While episodic memory declines with age, metacognitive monitoring is spared. The current study explored whether older adults can use their preserved metacognitive knowledge to make source guesses in the absence of source memory. Through repetition, w... |
| Older Adults' Use of Retrieval Strategies in Everyday Life |
2016 |
1498 |
Background: Despite declines in cognitive abilities, older adults often perform comparable to younger adults in everyday tasks [J Am Geriatr Soc 1999;47:172-183]. Older adults may compensate for cognitive declines by using more efficien... |
| Performance predictions affect attentional processes of event-based prospective memory |
2013 |
1711 |
To investigate whether making performance predictions affects prospective memory (PM) processing, we asked one group of participants to predict their performance in a PM task embedded in an ongoing task and compared their performance with a control g... |
| A prelearning manipulation falsifies a pure associational deficit account of retrieval shift during skill acquisition. |
2012 |
1797 |
Older adults adopt memory-based response strategies during consistent practice more slowly and less completely than younger adults. In two experiments, participants either prelearned all, half, or none of the noun-pair stimuli prior to the completion... |
| Preservation of memory-based automaticity in reading for older adults |
2015 |
1527 |
Concerning age-related effects on cognitive skill acquisition, the modal finding is that older adults do not benefit from practice to the same extent as younger adults in tasks that afford a shift from slower algorithmic processing to faster memory-b... |
| Priming performance-related concerns induces task-related mind-wandering |
2017 |
1224 |
Two experiments tested the hypothesis that priming of performance-related concerns would (1) increase the frequency of task-related mind-wandering (i.e., task-related interference; TRI) and (2) decrease task performance. In each experiment, sixty fem... |
| Relate it! Objective and subjective evaluation of mediator-based strategies for improving source memory in younger and older adults |
2017 |
1485 |
The present study examined younger and older adults' ability to improve their source memory for different types of sources through imaginal and verbal (sentence) mediators. Younger (18–29 years) and older (60–75 years) adults' strategy use and source... |
| The role of task understanding on younger and older adults’ performance |
2019 |
978 |
Objectives: Age-related performance decrements have been linked to inferior strategic choices. Strategy selection models argue that accurate task representations are necessary for choosing appropriate strategies. But no studies to date have compared ... |
| Stereotype threat as a trigger of mind-wandering in older adults |
2017 |
2313 |
Older adults (OAs) report less overall mind-wandering than younger adults (YAs) but more task-related interference (TRI; mind-wandering about the task). The current study examined TRI while manipulating older adults’ performance-related concerns. We ... |
| Strategy combination during execution of memory strategies in young and older adults |
2017 |
1417 |
The present study investigated whether people can combine two memory strategies to encode pairs of words more efficiently than with a single strategy, and age-related differences in such strategy combination. Young and older adults were asked to enco... |
| Strategy shift affordance and strategy choice in young and older adults |
2004 |
2703 |
When skill acquisition involves a shift in strategy (such as from rule-based to retrieval-based processing), older adults typically shift later in practice than young adults do. We observed the shift from
scanning-based to memory-based processing in... |
| Subjective Learning Discounts Test Type: Evidence from an Associative Learning and Transfer Task |
2010 |
1226 |
We evaluated the extent to which memory test format and test transfer influence the dynamics of metacognitive judgments. Participants completed 2 study-test phases for paired-associates, with or without transferring test type, in one of four conditio... |
| Successful aging: The role of cognitive gerontology |
2018 |
1696 |
This commentary explores the relationships between the construct of successful aging and the experimental psychology of human aging—cognitive gerontology. What can or should cognitive gerontology contribute to understanding, defining, and assessing s... |
| Validating older adults’ reports of less mind-wandering: An examination of eye movements and dispositional influences |
2015 |
2367 |
The Control Failures × Concerns theory perspective proposes that mind-wandering occurs, in part, because of failures to inhibit distracting thoughts from entering consciousness (McVay & Kane, 2012). Despite older adults (OAs) exhibiting poorer inhibi... |
| Younger and older adults weigh multiple cues in a similar manner to generate judgments of learning |
2015 |
1141 |
One’s memory for past test performance (MPT) is a key piece of information individuals use when deciding how to restudy material. We used a multi-trial recognition memory task to examine adult age differences in the influence of MPT (measured by actu... |