Moderation of Older Adults' Retrieval Reluctance Through Task Instructions and Monetary Incentives

Abstract

Previous research using a noun-pair lookup task indicates that older adults delay strategy shift from visual scanning to memory retrieval despite adequate learning, and that this "retrieval reluctance" is related to subjective choice factors. Age differences in spontaneous response criteria, with older adults valuing accuracy and young adults valuing speed, might account for this phenomenon. The present experiment manipulates instructions and reward contingencies to test the flexibility of response criteria and strategy preferences. Task instructions conditions equally focused on speed and accuracy, encouraged retrieval use as a method toward fast responding, or offered monetary incentives for fast retrieval-based performance. Results indicate that older adults in the incentives condition shifted to retrieval earlier than those without incentives, bolstering the argument that reliance on retrieval is volitional.

Comparing perceptual and preferential decision making

“…An interesting question for future research is whether participants would also respond less carefully in a perceptual task when the payoff is defined probabilistically. In sum, these results seem consistent with past research showing that increased monetary incentives motivate people to make decision more carefully in the preferential choice situations (Smith & Walker, 1993) as well as in cases where an objective criterion for choice accuracy is present (Touron, Swaim & Hertzog, 2007).…”

Preservation of memory-based automaticity in reading for older adults.

“…In contrast to older adults' relatively rapid shift to memory-based automaticity in reading (i.e., by Trial 6 during practice and then maintained into transfer), older adults showed minimal evidence for memory-based automaticity in alphabet arithmetic, aligning with prior research involving nonreading tasks (Hoyer et al, 2003;Jenkins & Hoyer, 2000;Rogers et al, 2000;Touron & Hertzog, 2004a, 2004bTouron et al, 2004Touron et al, , 2007. Of course, the reading task used here differed from the alphabet arithmetic task (and other tasks used in prior automaticity research) in various aspects of the task and materials.…”

Controlling retrieval during practice: Implications for memory-based theories of automaticity

“…Results from a few existing studies suggest that participants may have at least partial control over the involvement of retrieval during skill acquisition (Bourne, Raymond, & Healy, 2010;Touron & Hertzog, 2004Touron et al, 2007). For example, Bourne et al (2010) had participants repeatedly practice classifying letter strings based on whether a target letter within the string was a vowel or a consonant.…”

“…Finally, Touron et al (2007) used the noun-pair lookup task with older and younger adults but also included an instructional manipulation to influence learners' performance goals. Participants in the speed group were instructed that responding quickly was their primary goal and that they should use retrieval to accomplish the goal, whereas instructions for participants in the control group emphasized speed and accuracy equally.…”

“…Indeed, a voluminous amount of research has shown speed and accuracy gains with practice in many different cognitive tasks and with a diversity of learners (e.g., Anderson, Fincham, & Douglass, 1999;Logan, 1988;McAndrews & Moscovitch, 1990;Rawson, 2004;Rawson & Middleton, 2009;Rawson & Touron, 2009;Schneider & Shiffrin, 1977;Touron & Hertzog, 2004;Touron, Swaim, & Hertzog, 2007;Wilkins & Rawson, 2010). According to memory-based processing (MBP) theories of automaticity (e.g., Logan, 1988;Palmeri, 1997;Rickard, 1997), improvements in speed during practice are due to a shift from an item-general algorithmic process to an item-specific memory-based process.…”