No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This experiment investigated memory changes across the adult lifespan and some factors that might be associated with these changes. Adult participants of all ages (16 to 83 years old) were asked to orally describe scenic color photographs, and then following a delay, to re-describe these pictures from memory. Given information is objective, physical objects and their attributes that are depicted in a target picture, whereas beyond information is subjective, personal experiences and inferences that are not depicted in a target picture per se but are associated with a target picture. Chapter 3 examined the content of these picture descriptions for the amount of given and beyond information that was encoded and retrieved about target pictures. The results indicated an age-related decline in memory for given information and preserved memory for beyond information. Chapter 4 examined the relationship between perceptual and verbal ability and memory for given and beyond information. Perceptual ability was assessed by self-report measures of auditory and visual ability and verbal ability was measured by a standardized test. The results indicated that an age-related improvement in verbal ability, but not an age-related decline in perceptual ability, was related to memory for given and beyond information. Chapter 5 explored age-related changes in memory for feminine and masculine information across the adult female lifespan. Feminine and masculine information is information that would be considered exclusively relevant to young women and men, respectively. The results indicated an age-related increase in memory for feminine information and no age-related change in memory for masculine information. The divergent age-related changes in memory for given and beyond information and for feminine and masculine information were interpreted in terms of a developmental approach to schema theory and the lifespan psychology notions of selective optimization with compensation and loss in the service of growth. The present study suggests an integration between the domains of personality and cognitive psychology as one avenue for future research that could lead to a more complete understanding of memory and aging. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

No description available.

Distinctive encoding is the processing of unique item-specific information in the context of more general relational or organizational information. It enhances memory performance for both younger and older adults (Smith, 2006). The current work examined how adults use distinctive encoding to aid their free recall performance and whether task experience alters subsequent use of a distinctive encoding strategy. At study participants saw a series of five-item taxonomically categorized lists (e.g., FRUITS). They were first required to generate a category-consistent label (e.g., TASTY FRUIT). In the guided condition, they were then required to generate a single word representing either (1) another category-consistent characteristic (e.g., GROWS) or (2) a characteristic that distinguished a study target from the other items (e.g., FUZZY for the target KIWI). In the self-initiated condition, participants were allowed to select an encoding strategy on their own. After test, all participants completed a second study-test phase with self-initiated strategies. Younger adults initially rated distinctive encoding as more effective, relative to relational encoding, than did older adults, and this difference persisted after test experience, indicating an age difference in learning about the relative superiority of distinctive processing. Consistent with these ratings, distinctive encoding was implemented more so by unguided younger adults than older adults in phase 1. However, both strategy use and recall performance were similar across age and study conditions in phase 2. Both older and younger adults were capable of utilizing distinctive encoding effectively following task experience, although perceptions of strategic effectiveness did not always correspond to self-initiated study behaviors.

Prospective memory also known as remembering to remember is the process of remembering to carry out future actions. The present study investigated age-related differences in the performance of two complex prospective memory tasks for 30 younger adults (M = 19.43, SD = 2.10) and 30 older adults (M = 66.87, SD = 3.25). The two tasks had the same constraints, but were framed within different contexts (i.e., taking medications or scheduling groups). Participants performed the tasks within a simulated week based on activities they perform as part of their weekly routine, and they were given 30 minutes to develop plans to help them remember the tasks. Older adults were as accurate as younger adults in developing their plans for both tasks, but made significantly more errors in carrying out the prospective tasks. Planning style was not directly predictive of performance for the group task. However, age-related differences in performance for the medication task were related to planning style such that age-related declines in performance were observed for older adults who used a planning style that did not provide adequate memory support (i.e., list layout with time cues). Moreover, participants of all ages with lower levels of planning experience were more likely to select this ineffective planning style. These findings provide evidence that age-related differences in prospective memory can be ameliorated through the use of a familiar task and the opportunity to develop plans to remember the task. However, if participants develop an ineffective plan they will show performance decrements.

This project introduces a judgment of source learning (JOSL), an evaluative judgment by which participants make predictions about their ability to remember the source or modality of stimuli in the future (at test). The JOSL is an open-ended judgment that encapsulates a) participants confidence in the information they are able to retrieve at the time of the judgment, b) participants confidence in the strategy that they are using for retrieval, and c) participants confidence in how effective their current retrieval and monitoring strategies will be in the future. Younger and older adults studied a paired associate list comprised of unrelated text-sound, or text-picture stimuli. They provided judgments of learning for paired-associate memory (JOLs), and some provided judgments of source learning for target source memory (JOSLs). Participants also provided strategy reports for study. JOSLs did not reliably predict source recall, and level of source recall varied as a function of target type rather than condition. Age differences were found in JOL resolution, where younger adults were more accurate in their prediction of future paired associate memory than older adults. Confidence gammas showed that both younger and older adults could reliably identify which items they answered correctly; however, the confidence gamma for source recall of sound targets was reliably negative, mostly likely a result of a PICTURE response bias and overconfidence in wrongly source attributed sound targets.