Back to the future: Past and future era-based schematic support and associative memory for prices in younger and older adults.

Abstract

Older adults typically display various associative memory deficits, but these deficits can be reduced when conditions allow for the use of prior knowledge or schematic support. To determine how era-specific schematic support and future simulation might influence associative memory, we examined how younger and older adults remember prices from the past as well as the future. Younger and older adults were asked to imagine the past or future, and then studied items and prices from approximately 40 years ago (market value prices from the 1970s) or 40 years in the future. In Experiment 1, all items were common items (e.g., movie ticket, coffee) and the associated prices reflected the era in question, whereas in Experiment 2, some item-price pairs were specific to the time period (e.g., typewriter, robot maid), to test different degrees of schematic support. After studying the pairs, participants were shown each item and asked to recall the associated price. In both experiments, older adults showed similar performance as younger adults in the past condition for the common items, whereas age-related differences were greater in the future condition and for the era-specific items. The findings suggest that in order for schematic support to be effective, recent (and not simply remote) experience is needed in order to enhance memory. Thus, whereas older adults can benefit from “turning back the clock,” younger adults better remember future-oriented information compared with older adults, outlining age-related similarities and differences in associative memory and the efficient use of past and future-based schematic support.

Older and Younger Adults’ Strategic Control of Metacognitive Monitoring: The Role of Consequences, Task Experience, and Prior Knowledge

“…Furthermore, when the stimuli allowed the participants to utilize schematic or semantic knowledge (Experiment 3; the related word pairs in Experiment 2), no age-related differences were observed in recall performance or overall point score. This lack of age differences in memory performance, while rare, is consistent with evidence that schemas and prior knowledge can serve to mitigate typically observed age-related memory deficits (e.g., Castel, 2005, Castel, McGillivray & Worden, 2013; Umanath & Marsh, 2014). It is possible that being able to rely on prior knowledge reduces the cognitive resource demands associated with processing and recalling of information, and this may be particularly beneficial for older adults.…”

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.…”

“…Prior research has revealed older adults’ disproportionate associative memory deficits, including when specific and arbitrary numbers are present (Castel, 2005, 2007; Castel, McGillivray, & Worden, 2013). Other work has provided evidence for preserved memory in old age for valuable and emotional information (Carstensen & Mikels, 2005; Castel, 2008) and investigated how that information may be remembered in an associative context (Mather & Nesmith, 2008; Naveh-Benjamin et al, 2012).…”

A Specificity Principle of Memory: Evidence From Aging and Associative Memory

“…There have been a few attempts to assess whether older adults can remember the gist of associations, such as studies showing that they can retrieve the gist of item–price pairs (Castel, 2005; Castel, McGillivray, & Worden, 2013). However, it is possible that older adults could remember the gist of what price was associated with a given item in those studies because they could rely on preexisting knowledge (e.g., “A gallon of milk is usually $2 to $3”).…”