Schematic Support increases Memory Strategy Use in Young and Older Adults

During learning, a shift in processing often occurs with increased task experience, where initialslow, algorithmic processing proceeds into fast, retrieval-based processing. Older adults are slower than young adults in the rate at which this shift occurs, in part due a reluctance to use a retrieval strategy. The present research employed task materials that alleviate age-related differences in associative memory so that participants could rely on prior knowledge, or schematic support. The goal was to determine whether older adults’ retrieval reluctance is due to a general avoidance of using the retrieval strategy or to low confidence in their memory for unfamiliar task materials. Participants completed two learning tasks: the Noun-Pair Lookup Task, where task materials consist of unrelated noun pairs, and an isomorph, the Grocery-Price Look Task, where task materials were grocery-items and prices. In this second task, the prices were either market-priced and consistent with everyday experience or were overpriced. Older adults were retrieval reluctant in the Noun-Pair Lookup Task, replicating previous findings. Stark condition differences were found in the Grocery-Price Lookup Task; older adults shifted much sooner for market-priced materials than for overpriced materials, and young adults shifted much later than expected for overpriced materials, where their final levels of learning were inconsistent with their memory use. Condition differences in retrieval use were substantially larger than the differences in retrieval accuracy. These results imply that confidence in using the retrieval strategy matters for both young and older adults, and that retrieval reluctance is not solely an age-related phenomenon.

Young children's difficulty with adjectives modifying nouns

In two experiments we tested the hypothesis that children have a basic problem in mastering the attributive relation because it involves a two-step logical–semantic integration process of the head-noun and the attributive adjective. Hebrew-speaking children were asked to interpret highly familiar adjective–noun combinations by selecting a photo that depicted the correct referent. In Experiment 1 there were four choices for each adjective–noun pair: correct object/correct property, correct object/wrong property, wrong object/correct property, wrong object/wrong property. 170 children (1;6–4;4) participated. Analyses of errors and spontaneous self-corrections indicated that children initially ignored the adjective and based their responses only on the noun. In Experiment 2, in addition to the 4-choice condition, there were two simpler conditions with only two choices: the correct object/correct property, and either the correct object/wrong property, or the wrong object/correct property. 30 children (1;9–4;11) were tested. The children, and in particular the lowest-scoring third of the sample, did significantly better in the 2-pictures conditions. The results suggest that young children do possess a basic adjective vocabulary and can use it in simple discriminations, but have a considerable difficulty in integrating the information furnished by the adjective with information furnished by the noun.

The Role of Individual Differences in Determining Interaction Strategies and Performance on Computer Based Tasks

In completing any given task, whether it be driving or a computer task, indviduals have a wide array of strategies available to them. Investigations of computer tasks have shown that individual differences of cognitive styles and abilites are related to the types of strategies individuals use to complete the task (Schmidt-Nielsen and Ackerman, 1993). Typically, those who have higher reasoning abilities use more sophisticated strategies for performing the task than those with a lower level of ability. Further, it has been demonstrated that these strategies tend to hold over a variety of tasks. For example, performance on a computer graphing task was shown to be correlated to cognitive reasoning ability. The current study extended the work of Schmidt-Nielsen and Ackerman and found that there were a wide variety of performance strategies and these strategies were correlated with reasoning ability, field dependency, and performance on the noun pair task.

Age Differences on a Paired-Associates Task: How Does Practice Type and Order Affect Training?

The purpose of this research was to determine if manipulating the order and type of practice would affect the outcome of training for both young and older adults. We examined age differences in performance on a paired-associates task in which type and order of practice were manipulated. Two versions of a noun-pair associates task were used; in the consistent mapping (CM) version the noun-pairs did not change from trial to trial; in the varied mapping version (VM) the noun-pairs changed from trial to trial. The CM task allowed the subjects to learn the noun-pairs whereas the VM task required that subjects always refer to a key in order to perform the task. Two groups of subjects were trained and the order in which they received the CM and VM versions was manipulated between groups. There were group differences in initial performance on the CM task for both young and older adults. The data indicate that having performed the task at all provided some benefit in terms of reaction time. The subjects were able to acquire the skill of performing the task in the first version they performed and this skill acquisition aided their subsequent performance. In addition, the benefits of prior practice were longer-lasting for older adults relative to young adults.

Spontaneous Elaboration in Mexican-American and Anglo-American High School Seniors

Noun-pair learning in twelfth-graders from similar socioeconomic backgrounds was assessed as a function of ethnicity (Mexican- vs. Anglo-American), IQ (low vs. average), and instructional conditions (control vs. instructed). Neither the main effect for ethnicity nor any of its interactions was significant. The main effect for IQ however, was significant such that average IQ learners recalled more noun pairs than low IQ learners. Furthermore, learners instructed to generate sentences performed significantly better than learners in the control condition. The interaction of lQ and instructions revealed that the difference between the instructed and control groups was signifinantly greater for low IQ learners than for average IQ learners.