An important feature of the memory system is the ability to forget, but aging is associated with declines in the ability to intentionally forget potentially due to declines in cognitive control. Despite cognitive deficits, older adults are sensitive to affective manipulations, such as reward motivation, and reward anticipation can improve older adults' memory performance. The goal of the current studies was to examine the effect of reward motivation on directed remembering and forgetting. Participants were healthy CloudResearch/Turk Prime workers aged 18-35 and 60-85. In Experiment 1, we conducted a typical item-method directed forgetting task using neutral words presented one at a time followed by a to-be-remembered (TBR) or to-be-forgotten (TBF) cue. A recognition memory test followed that included all words from the encoding task, as well as new words. We replicated prior findings of better memory for TBR compared to TBF items, but not typical age-related differences in recognition of TBF items. In Experiments 2-4, we repeated this paradigm except that in the second block of trials, each word was presented with a high ($0.75) or low ($0.01) reward cue indicating the value that could be earned if the item was successfully Remembered or Forgotten (depending on cue). During recognition, correct responses to target items (both TBR and TBF) resulted in the associated reward, but incorrect "old" responses resulted in a loss of $0.50. In three experiments, high rewards led to better memory for younger and older adults compared to low rewards, regardless of the directed cue to remember or forget the word. In Experiments 3 and 4, older adults showed typical deficits in directed forgetting, but this was across reward conditions. For older adults, there was no evidence that including reward motivation improved cognitive control abilities as high value reward anticipation did not improve directed forgetting. Instead, in line with hypotheses, high compared to low value reward anticipation leads to engagement of processes that result in better memory regardless of the TBR or TBF cue, and reward anticipation bolsters memory in a relatively automatic, rather than strategic, fashion that overrides one's ability to cognitively control encoding processes.
Remembering and forgetting are both important processes of a healthy memory system, but both processes can show age-related decline. Reward anticipation is effective at improving remembering in both younger and older adults, but little is known about the effects of incentives on forgetting. In four online experiments, we examined whether reward motivation modulates intentional remembering and forgetting in younger and older adults, and systematically varied the presentation of reward cues during encoding to test whether the temporal dynamics of reward anticipation are important for directed forgetting performance. Both age groups showed directed forgetting effects such that participants remembered more items they were instructed to remember than instructed to forget, but across experiments, we found no evidence that reward incentives improved forgetting in either age group. Younger adults consistently exhibited reward-modulated memory across experiments and varying the timing of the reward cue had little impact on performance. Older adults displayed inconsistent effects of reward on memory, only when reward anticipation was elicited closer to the middle of the experimental trial did it enhance memory in this task. Overall, the findings from the current set of experiments indicate that reward anticipation improved memory, but not forgetting, and most consistently for younger adults, compared to older adults. Further, older adults’ cognitive performance may be more sensitive to the placement and timing of reward anticipation in the experimental trial perhaps due to the time course of reward anticipation and interactions with the hippocampus that may show age-related change.
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