Strategy combination during execution of memory strategies in young and older adults

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Dayna R. Touron, Professor of Psychology and Associate Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/

Abstract: 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 encode pairs of words (e.g., satellite-tunnel). For each item, participants were told to use either the interactive-imagery strategy (e.g., mentally visualising the two words and making them interact), the sentence-generation strategy (i.e., generate a sentence linking the two words), or with strategy combination (i.e., generating a sentence while mentally visualising it). Participants obtained better recall performance on items encoded with strategy combination than on items encoded with interactive-imagery or sentence-generation strategies. Moreover, we found age-related decline in such strategy combination. These findings have important implications to further our understanding of execution of memory strategies, and suggest that strategy combination occurs in a variety of cognitive domains.

Additional Information

Publication
Memory, 25(5), 619-625. [2017]
Language: English
Date: 2017
Keywords
Aging, memory, paired associate learning, strategy, strategy combination

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