Memory for Weather Information in Younger and Older Adults: Tests of Verbatim and Gist Memory

Abstract

Background/Study Context: Memory for specific, verbatim details tends to decline with age, and reliance on gist-based information increases. However, instructions that direct attention toward certain types of information can benefit memory accuracy for that information. Previous work has examined gist-based and verbatim memory for images, but little work has utilized stimuli that participants may study in their daily lives, such as a weather forecast. Methods:The current study examined how younger and older adults recall both general, gistbased information and specific, verbatim details of a weather forecast, and whether differences in the task instructions to focus on gist-based information may affect recall. Two study-test cycles with different forecasts were used to determine whether experience with the task may affect performance. Results:While there was no effect of additional gist-based instructions on recall of gist-based information, participants who received the additional instructions recalled fewer verbatim details than those who did not. There were no age-related differences in recall of the gist of the forecast, but younger adults correctly recalled more verbatim details than older adults did. Conclusion:Environmental support and use of gist-based processing can allow both younger and older adults to remember information that can be useful in their daily lives. The current study informs future research on prospective memory and memory for everyday information.

Emotion-enhanced binding of numerical information in younger and older adults

“…Based on the results of our experiment, we found further evidence to support previous research suggesting an associative memory deficit present in old age, here extending that work to associative numerical memory (Castel, 2007; Naveh-Benjamin, 2000). These results may appear to conflict with previous work demonstrating that older adults have better memory for numbers that fit a particular schema, but worse memory for items that are schema-irrelevant like over-market grocery prices (Castel, 2005; Castel et al, 2013; Gallo et al, 2019; Soederberg Miller, 2003). In the context of the current study, older adults may have more schematic support for negative and positive sentences, as they are perhaps more likely to consume this type of information in the daily news cycle than more neutral information.…”

“…This analysis examining lenient recall accuracy suggests that when using a gist-based measure, older adults were equally as accurate in their memory as younger adults, which supports well-established findings of older adults’ reliance on gist-based processing (Brainerd & Reyna, 2001; Gallo et al, 2019; Koutstaal, 2006; Reder et al, 1986). Unfortunately, this more lenient scoring criterion was not sensitive enough to detect the Arousal × Valence interaction, which was likely eliminated due to the more liberal measure.…”

“…We also examined a more lenient memory measure in which participants’ responses were counted as correct if they fell within ±10% of the target response (e.g., a response of 54 would be counted as correct for the sentence “The 56-year-old man was in the car” as it falls within ±5.6 of the correct value). This dependent measure was analysed as older adults may be more likely to rely on gist-based processing and memory (Brainerd & Reyna, 2001; Gallo, Hargis, & Castel, 2019; Koutstaal, 2006; Reder, Wible, & Martin, 1986) and thus exhibit a smaller or no age-related memory deficit on this measure.…”

“…This type of test has been shown to be more cognitively demanding than recognition testing where participants must recognise which association was previously presented from a number of alternatives, as recall may depend solely on conscious recollection of information, as opposed to recollection and feelings of familiarity (Jacoby, Toth, & Yonelinas, 1993; Mandler, 1980). A dearth of prior work has demonstrated that older adults may exhibit disproportionate deficits in recall relative to recognition (Craik & McDowd, 1987; Danckert & Craik, 2013; Jennings & Jacoby, 1997), perhaps related to older adults’ reliance on gist-based processing and memory (Brainerd & Reyna, 2001; Gallo et al, 2019; Koutstaal, 2006; Reder et al, 1986; for a recent in-depth meta-analysis on older adults’ recognition memory, see Fraundorf, Hourihan, Peters, & Benjamin, 2019). An amended version of the current study could present participants with sentences containing numbers varying in emotional valence and examine associative memory between younger and older adults using recognition testing (e.g., a five-alternative-forced-choice test).…”

A gist orientation before retrieval impacts the objective content but not the subjective experience of episodic memory

“…At test, participants were asked to determine which of the two items was the cheapest (i.e., gist information) or to recall the exact price (i.e., verbatim/detailed information). It was found that older adults, who presumably relied more on the gist of the stimuli, had comparable performance as young adults when choosing the cheapest item while their memory performance for the exact price was lower (Flores et al, 2017; see also Gallo, Hargis, & Castel, 2019 for comparable results).…”