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Objective Neuropsychologists are using virtual reality to simulate everyday activities in order to increase ecological validity in neuropsychological assessments (Kane & Parsons, 2017). However, relatively little is known about the extent to which comfort with computers and analog tasks influences older adults’ performance on virtual reality-based tasks. Methods Healthy older adults (N = 42) rated how comfortable they are with computers and cooking meals in daily life and completed the Virtual Kitchen Protocol, a measure of procedural learning and memory for meal preparation tasks. Results Both higher comfort with cooking meals in a real kitchen and higher comfort with computers were associated with better learning, immediate recall, and delayed recall of the procedural task in virtual reality. However, comfort with computers did not explain a significant amount of variance in performance beyond comfort cooking in a real kitchen. Conclusion While both comfort with computers and analog versions of tasks may relate to older adults’ learning and memory in virtual reality, performance may be primarily related to analog abilities.

Objective The Virtual Environment Grocery Store (VEGS) was created to measure memory and everyday functional abilities (Parsons & McMahan, 2017). The objective of this study was to compare young adults’ recall of the VEGS shopping list with the CVLT-II in order to investigate what impact the virtual environment has on recall. Methods Young adults (ages 18–26, M = 18.90, SD = 1.60; N = 39) completed the VEGS and the CVLT-II. Results Young adults had higher recall on the CVLT-II than VEGS for immediate recall and delayed free recall, but there were no differences on delayed cued recall and delayed recognition. Conclusion Immediate and delayed free recall on the VEGS may be more difficult on the VEGS than the CVLT-II, perhaps reflecting the word length effect. The virtual environment may have allowed for deeper levels of processing, explaining the lack of differences on delayed cued recall and delayed recognition.

Objective: Psychologists have long used nonsensical information in the study of learning and memory (Ebbinghaus, 1885). Nonsensical information makes it difficult to rely on previous learning and thus increases task novelty (Quent et al., 2021). Little extant research has investigated the impact of task novelty in everyday activities, which are often overlearned. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of task novelty on a procedural learning and memory task in virtual reality. Method: Healthy young adults (N = 41; ages 18–25, M = 18.73, SD = 1.38) completed the Virtual Kitchen Protocol (VKP; Barnett, Parsons, & Childers, 2021), a virtual reality-based measure of learning and memory for meal preparation of both regular (e.g., cooking an egg) and nonsensical (e.g., placing a menu in a toaster) dishes. Results: Results of a Wilcoxon signed-rank test found that in immediate recall, participants demonstrated better recall for preparing regular dishes (M = 31.51, SD = 3.33) than nonsensical dishes (M = 26.68, SD = 4.75); z = 4.699. p < 0.001.; after a 20-minute delay, participants still had better recall for preparing regular dishes (M = 32.81, SD = 2.44) than the nonsensical ones (M = 27.32, SD = 4.38); z = 5.288, p < 0.001. Conclusions: Task novelty had a negative impact on recall for everyday procedural tasks in virtual reality. Overlearned behaviors may affect performance on measures of everyday activities, but the use of nonsensical analog tasks may provide a means of controlling for task familiarity.

Ageism refers to stereotypes about and prejudice against individuals on the basis of age. Ageism among young adults may be different than other forms of intolerance simply because age changes; that is, young adults will grow older, and they will eventually become a member of what is presently an outgroup (i.e., older adults). The purpose of this study was to investigate whether ageism among young adults (N = 623) is more closely associated with future-oriented variables (i.e., optimism and fear of death) or whether ageism more closely resembles an outgroup attitude, which like other outgroup attitudes is mitigated by knowledge about and quality of contact with those outgroup members. Bivariate correlations found that knowledge of aging, quality of contact with older adults, and optimism were associated with lower ageism. In a multiple regression analysis, only knowledge about aging and quality of contact with older adults were associated with lower ageism. Overall, the results suggest that ageism represents more of an outgroup attitude rather than a future-oriented attitude. These results support the contact hypothesis in that knowledge of aging and quality of contact with older adults were associated with lower ageism among young adults. Education about aging and quality contact with older adults may be effective ways to reduce ageism among young adults.