Making guesses during learning can be beneficial for older adults' memory

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Gerontology

Background:

• Pretesting enhances memory recall in young adults.
• The effect of pretesting on memory in older adults is less understood.
• The influence of repeated guessing during pretesting on memory recall requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine if older adults exhibit the pretesting effect observed in young adults.
• To investigate how repeated guessing attempts during pretesting modulate memory recall in both age groups.
• To examine potential transfer effects of pretesting to previously studied information.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments were conducted involving young and older adults.
• Participants engaged in pretesting (single or multiple guessing attempts) before studying material (word pairs or prose passages).
• Recall was assessed on a final test; Experiment 2 also tested for transfer effects.

Main Results:

• Both young and older adults benefited from a single pretest guessing attempt.
• Multiple guessing attempts during pretesting enhanced recall for word pairs but not prose passages.
• No transfer of the pretesting effect was observed for previously studied but untested information in either age group.

Conclusions:

• Older adults demonstrate the pretesting effect, similar to young adults.
• The magnitude of the pretesting effect is modulated by the number of guessing attempts and material type.
• Pretesting effects do not appear to transfer to other learned information.