Age differences in perceptions of memory strategy effectiveness for recent and remote memory

Abstract

We examined whether young and older adults hold different beliefs about the effectiveness of memory strategies for specific types of memory tasks and whether memory strategies are perceived to be differentially effective for young, middle-aged, and older targets. Participants rated the effectiveness of five memory strategies for 10 memory tasks at three target ages (20, 50, and 80 years old). Older adults did not strongly differentiate strategy effectiveness, viewing most strategies as similarly effective across memory tasks. Young adults held strategy-specific beliefs, endorsing external aids and physical health as more effective than a positive attitude or internal strategies, without substantial differentiation based on task. We also found differences in anticipated strategy effectiveness for targets of different ages. Older adults described cognitive and physical health strategies as more effective for older than middle-aged targets, whereas young adults expected these strategies to be equally effective for middle-aged and older target adults.

Optimal cognitive offloading: Increased reminder usage but reduced proreminder bias in older adults.

“…While the present results are consistent with the view that older adults also choose to use external reminders as a means of avoiding cognitive effort, this tendency might be reduced if the act of setting reminders is itself seen as effortful. This possibility is congruent with previous research (Hertzog et al, 2012;Lineweaver et al, 2018) showing that older people choose strategies according to both their perceived difficulty and effectiveness, while younger people tend to consider effectiveness predominantly. Similarly, Hertzog et al (2017) suggested that older people tended to use rote repetition rather than switching to more effective strategies due to the cognitive effort involved in switching strategies.…”

Educational Strategies on Memorizing the Quran: A Review of Literature

“…This study also assumes that the educational strategies in memorizing the Quran could positively impact the performance of the memory as evident in the study by Frankenmolen et al (2018), which shows significant improvement on the memory performance of the intervention group based on the primary outcome measure on the memory functioning in daily life. This is also corroborated with the study by Lineweaver et al (2018) that memory strategies had hugely affected the functions of daily memory based on the opinion of the adult respondents. Based on the past studies on classification memory strategies, this study solely focuses on the internal memory strategies which consist of attention, rehearsal, repetition and chunking as well as the external memory strategies which refer to memory aids, exercise, sufficient sleep and balanced diet as healthy lifestyle is crucial for a good mental state and memory (The State of Queensland, 2017).…”

“…Therefore, appropriate educational strategies were executed in order to maximize the function of the memory based on the study by May and Einstein (2013), the memory strategies involved for the sensory memory are attention and automaticity, maintenance rehearsal, as well as elaborative rehearsal and chunking for the working memory as to ensure that the information could be activated. However, this review only focuses on the memory strategies of classification, internal and external based on the studies by Lineweaver et al (2018); Frankenmolen et al (2018).…”