Motivated Memory for What Matters Most

Self Cite

We are often presented with more information than we can remember, and we must selectively focus on the most valuable information to maximize memory utility. Most tests of value-based memory involve encoding and then being tested on a list of recently studied information. Thus, people are focused on memory for the current list and are encouraged to forget information from earlier lists. However, prior learning can influence later memory, in both interfering and beneficial ways, and there may be age-related differences in how younger and older adults are influenced by the costs and benefits of prior learning and interference. In the present study, we presented younger and older adults with words paired with point values to remember for a later test but rather than asking participants to only recall words from the juststudied list, participants were asked to recall all studied words on each recall test. Results revealed that younger adults were more likely to recall words from previous lists than older adults, indicating that older adults were more susceptible to retroactive interference. Moreover, although selectivity is often preserved in older adults when study-test cycles are independent, a buildup of proactive interference arising from previously studied words reduced memory selectivity in older adults. Thus, when presented with more information than one can remember, younger adults are better at combating interference and recalling valuable information, while older adults may engage in selective forgetting of prior lists to enhance a "present-focused" form of memory, possibly as a result of impaired inhibitory control. Public Significance StatementWhen presented with more information than one can remember, younger adults are better at combating interference and recalling valuable information, while older adults may engage in selective forgetting of previously learned information to enhance a "present-focused" form of memory.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differential effects of proactive and retroactive interference in value-directed remembering for younger and older adults.

Murphy¹,

Castel²

2022

Self Cite

“…Knowlton & Castel, 2022). Also, the present work used two study–test trials, and it may be the case that with additional task experience (such as more trials and greater awareness of associative memory impairments), older adults may become more selective on later trials (see Whatley et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Participants in such tasks are told that their goal is to maximize their score, which is calculated by adding the points associated with the words they recalled. Substantial work suggests that despite age-related declines in memory (e.g., Craik & Salthouse, 2011;Kausler, 1994;Light, 1991), older adults can remember high-value information as well as younger adults, but their memory for lowvalue words is impaired (Castel et al, 2002(Castel et al, , 2007(Castel et al, , 2012Murphy & Castel, 2022c, 2022d; see also Knowlton & Castel, 2022;Whatley et al, 2021).…”

Section: Objective and Subjective Importancementioning

confidence: 99%

Younger and older adults’ strategic use of associative memory and metacognitive control when learning foreign vocabulary words of varying importance.

Murphy¹,

Hargis²,

Castel³

2023

Self Cite

Older adults often face memory deficits in binding unrelated items. However, in situations such as preparing for foreign travel, a learner may be highly motivated to learn the translations of important words (e.g., “money”). In the present study, younger and older adults studied Swahili–English word pairs and judged the importance of knowing each pair if they were traveling to a foreign country. Generally, we expected older adults to display a memory deficit but for both younger and older adults’ memory to be driven by the subjective importance of the to-be-learned information. Both younger and older adults’ memory was related to their subjective importance ratings, suggesting that both age groups were able to engage in goal-based value-directed remembering. With increased task experience, older adults appeared to utilize a strategic approach in their study of the translations by spending more time studying the items relative to younger adults. Thus, despite associative memory deficits in older age, both younger and older adults can selectively remember subjectively important information such that older adults can effectively remember new vocabulary that is subjectively important and related to their future goals.

“…There is prior work, to suggest that older adults access memory representations with more content. Despite reduced specificity, older adults retain higher order gist-level features of memories (Castel et al, 2007; Gallo et al, 2019; Koutstaal & Schacter, 1997; Rhodes et al, 2008; Whatley et al, 2021). For example, older adults remember the underlying meaning of an encoded narrative story, akin to the gist of the story (Adams et al, 1997).…”

Section: Aging and Autobiographical Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Differences in the content and coherence of autobiographical memories between younger and older adults: Insights from text analysis.

Sheldon¹,

Zhang²,

Setton³

et al. 2024

Several studies have shown that older adults generate autobiographical memories with fewer specific details than younger adults, a pattern typically attributed to age-relate declines in episodic memory. A relatively unexplored question is how aging affects the content used to represent and recall these memories. We recently proposed that older adults may predominately represent and recall autobiographical memories at the gist level. Emerging from this proposal is the hypothesis that older adults represent memories with a wider array of content topics and recall memories with a distinct narrative style when compared to younger adults. We tested this hypothesis by applying natural language processing approaches to a data set of autobiographical memories described by healthy younger and older adults. We used topic modeling to estimate the distribution (i.e., diversity) of content topics used to represent a memory, and sentence embedding to derive an internal similarity score to estimate the shifts in content when narrating a memory. First, we found that older adults referenced a wider array of content topics (higher content diversity) than younger adults when recalling their autobiographical memories. Second, we found older adults were included more content shifts when narrating their memories than younger adults, suggesting a reduced reliance on choronology to form a coherent memory. Third, we found that the content diversity measures were positively related to specific detail generation for older adults, potentially reflecting age-related compensation for episodic memory difficulties. We discuss how our results shed light on how younger and older adults differ in the way they remember and describe the past.