Developmental differences in value-directed remembering: effects of testing and feedback in adolescents and adults

Value-directed remembering allows learners to selectively prioritize important information, but its development during adolescence remains incompletely understood. Both strategic and automatic processing mechanisms are thought to support value-directed remembering, with strategic processing enhancing both recollection and familiarity, and automatic processing primarily facilitating recollection. The present study examined how testing and feedback shape value-directed remembering in adolescents (13-15 years old) and young adults (19-21 years old) across two experiments. Results indicated that in the absence of free recall testing and feedback, value effects emerged only in adults' recollection-based retrieval. In contrast, adolescents failed to show reliable value selectivity in either recollection or familiarity.Under repeated testing conditions, young adults demonstrated robust value selectivity regardless of whether feedback was available. In contrast, adolescents showed a selective advantage only in the presence of feedback, with no significant enhancement in the no-feedback condition. Further analyses of recognition performance revealed that value-related advantages in recollection primarily reflected developmental differences: young adults demonstrated significantly higher recollection for high-value items than adolescents, independent of feedback. By contrast, familiarity-based value effects were observed in both feedback and no-feedback conditions, with feedback further increasing overall familiarity across value levels. Taken together, these findings suggest that the selective advantage in adolescent value-directed remembering may be more evident under feedback support, with developmental differences primarily manifested in the recollection component.