The effects of task novelty for age cohort and cognition level on memory for everyday virtual meal preparation tasks

Nonsensical information increases task novelty, which makes it difficult to rely on previous learning and provides insight into the learning of new tasks. This study investigated procedural-based action scripts in everyday memory for meal preparation tasks in virtual reality. The sample (N = 171) consisted of 3 groups determined by age and cognitive function: young adults (YA; n = 61), older adults with normal cognition (OA; n = 82), and older adults with impaired cognition (IC; n = 28). The three groups completed the Virtual Kitchen Protocol, a virtual reality-based measure of learning and memory for cooking both familiar and nonsensical meals. Results showed that YAs had a greater recall for both familiar and nonsensical meals than OAs or ICs. Additionally, novel stimuli (i.e., nonsensical meal tasks) appear to impact older adults more than young adults. Among older adults, impaired cognition was associated with lower performance on both the sensical and nonsensical meals compared to normal cognition. All three groups performed better on familiar tasks than nonsensical tasks. These results were consistent with the notion that familiarity may be of greater use than novelty in the context of procedural-based action scripts.