In this direct replication of Mueller and Oppenheimer’s (2014) Study 1, participants watched a lecture while taking notes with a laptop ( n = 74) or longhand ( n = 68). After a brief distraction and without the opportunity to study, they took a quiz. As in the original study, laptop participants took notes containing more words spoken verbatim by the lecturer and more words overall than did longhand participants. However, laptop participants did not perform better than longhand participants on the quiz. Exploratory meta-analyses of eight similar studies echoed this pattern. In addition, in both the original study and our replication, higher word count was associated with better quiz performance, and higher verbatim overlap was associated with worse quiz performance, but the latter finding was not robust in our replication. Overall, results do not support the idea that longhand note taking improves immediate learning via better encoding of information.

Previous research has used stationary eye-tracking in the lab to examine age differences in attentional deployment, showing that older adults display gaze patterns toward positive stimuli. This positive gaze preference sometimes improves older adults’ mood compared to their younger counterparts. However, the lab environment may lead to different emotion regulation behavior among older adults compared to what they do in their everyday life. We, therefore, present the first use of stationary eye-tracking within participants’ homes to examine gaze patterns toward video clips of varying valence and to study age differences in emotional attention among younger, middle-aged, and older adults in a more naturalistic environment. We also compared these results to in-lab gaze preferences among the same participants. Older adults deployed attention more to positive stimuli in the lab but more to negative stimuli in the home. This increased attention to negative content in the home predicted higher self-reported arousal outcomes among middle-aged and older adults. Gaze preferences toward emotional stimuli may thus differ depending on the context, emphasizing the need to explore more naturalistic settings within emotion regulation and aging research.