Memory for Allergies and Health Foods: How Younger and Older Adults Strategically Remember Critical Health Information

Abstract

Objectives: While older adults often display memory deficits, with practice, they can sometimes selectively remember valuable information at the expense of less value information. We examined age-related differences and similarities in memory for health-related information under conditions where some information was critical to remember. Method: In Experiment 1, participants studied 3 lists of allergens, ranging in severity from 0 (not a health risk) to 10 (potentially fatal), with the instruction that it was particularly important to remember items to which a fictional relative was most severely allergic. After each list, participants received feedback regarding their recall of the high-value allergens. Experiment 2 examined memory for health benefits, presenting foods that were potentially beneficial to the relative's immune system. Results: While younger adults exhibited better overall memory for the allergens, both age groups in Experiment 1 developed improved selectivity across the lists, with no evident age differences in severe allergen recall by List 2. Selectivity also developed in Experiment 2, although age differences for items of high health benefit were present. Discussion: The results have implications for models of selective memory in older age, and for how aging influences the ability to strategically remember important information within health-related contexts.

The value in rushing: Memory and selectivity when short on time

“…Irrespective of study condition, participants showed an increase in selectivity across the lists of Segment 1. This is consistent with prior research demonstrating increases in selectivity with greater task familiarity (e.g., Castel, 2008; McGillivray & Castel, 2011; Middlebrooks et al, in press) and is indicative of strategy modification and/or more successful execution of an established value-based strategy. This selectivity continued to increase during Segment 2 in spite of mid-task shifts in study time; prior experiences with an alternate study rate did not appear to impact selectivity under novel conditions.…”

“…So, in order to account for potential within- and between-subject differences in value-based recall strategies, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to analyze recall within each segment as a function of list and item value between the four study conditions (Middlebrooks et al, in press; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). HLM first clusters the data within each participant, thereby accounting for individual differences in strategy, and then considers potential differences in the impact of value and timing on recall across conditions, all while reflecting the to-be-remembered information as it was studied by participants and maintaining the overall data structure—a continuous value scale.…”

“…Based on prior research (e.g., Castel, Farb, & Craik, 2007; Middlebrooks, McGillivray, Murayama, & Castel, in press), a rate of 5 seconds per word was chosen in order to provide sufficient time for participants to identify the word's value, determine whether or not it met any sort of strategy criterion, and/or to potentially engage in some form of elaborative rehearsal. The 1-second rate was chosen as a contrasting time; insufficient for any lengthy and elaborative rehearsal, it was still enough time for intentional encoding.…”

Motivated Cognition: Effects of Reward, Emotion, and Other Motivational Factors Across a Variety of Cognitive Domains

“…Beyond motoric and self-referential processing, numerous other distinct factors can also be construed as being instances of motivated cognition. For instance, people have also been shown to be able to prioritize memory for words representing allergens and medication side-effects that were instructed to be more severe (Friedman et al, 2015;Middlebrooks et al, 2016), similar to prior prioritization studies that used reward values (Castel et al, 2002). It has also been shown in a number of studies that words processed with their survival relevance in-mind are remembered better than in the context of several other instructions (Kang et al, 2008;Nairne et al, , 2007Soderstrom & McCabe, 2011;Weinstein et al, 2008).…”

“…Providing more mechanistic similarities between emotion and reward, both have been shown to relate to autonomic function (e.g., pupil dilation and heart rate) (Abercrombie et al, 2008;Ariel & Castel, 2014;Bijleveld et al, 2009;Bradley et al, 2001Bradley et al, , 2008Buchanan et al, 2006;Fowles et al, 1982;Hochman & Yechiam, 2011;Manohar et al, 2017). Additionally, there are age-related differences in both emotion and reward processing, where older adults are more biased towards positively valenced and gain experiences, than negative/loss experiences (Barber et al, 2016;Carstensen & Mikels, 2005;Castel et al, 2016;Mikels & Reed, 2009;Mikels et al, 2016;Pachur et al, 2017;Samanez Larkin et al, 2007). This parallel may be somewhat exaggerated, however, as emotion and reward are sometimes experimentally operationalized similarly, and thus would produce similar effects in behavior.…”