These data have important practical implications for older adults' ability to perform cognitively demanding tasks even in what many consider to be an unobtrusive environment.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate whether retro-cues in STM facilitate the encoding of objects into LTM such that they are more likely to be subsequently retrieved by older adults. Our results support the idea that retrospective attention can be an effective means by which older adults can improve their short and long-term memory performance, even in the context of reduced memory capacity.

Behavioral research has shown that spatial cues that orient attention toward task relevant items being maintained in visual short-term memory (VSTM) enhance item memory accuracy. However, it is unknown if these retrospective attentional cues (“retro-cues”) enhance memory beyond typical short-term memory delays. It is also unknown whether retro-cues affect the spatial information associated with VSTM representations. Emerging evidence suggests that processes that affect short-term memory maintenance may also affect long-term memory (LTM) but little work has investigated the role of attention in LTM. In the current event-related potential (ERP) study, we investigated the duration of retrospective attention effects and the impact of retrospective attention manipulations on VSTM representations. Results revealed that retro-cueing improved both VSTM and LTM memory accuracy and that posterior maximal ERPs observed during VSTM maintenance predicted subsequent LTM performance. N2pc ERPs associated with attentional selection were attenuated by retro-cueing suggesting that retrospective attention may disrupt maintenance of spatial configural information in VSTM. Collectively, these findings suggest that retrospective attention can alter the structure of memory representations, which impacts memory performance beyond short-term memory delays.

Declines in both short and long-term memory are typical of healthy aging. Recent findings suggest that retrospective attentional cues ("retro-cues") that indicate the location of to-be-probed items enhance both short (STM) and long-term memory (LTM) performance in young adults. Whether older adults can also use retro-cues to facilitate both STM and LTM memory is unknown.Young and older adults performed a visual STM task in which spatially informative retro-cues or non-informative neutral-cues were presented during STM maintenance of real-world objects. We tested participants' memory for retro-cued and neutral-cued objects at both at short and long delays in order to measure the effect of retrospective attention on STM and LTM. Older adults showed reduced STM and LTM capacity compared to young adults. However, they showed similar magnitude retro-cue memory benefits as young adults at both STM and LTM delays. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate whether retro-cues improve both STM and LTM in older adults. Our results support the idea that retrospective attention can be an effective means by which older adults can improve their short and long-term memory performance, even in the context of reduced memory capacity.