Does a Time-Monitoring Deficit Influence Older Adults' Delayed Retrieval Shift During Skill Acquisition?

The authors evaluated age-related time-monitoring deficits and their contribution to older adults' reluctance to shift to memory retrieval in the noun-pair lookup (NP) task. Older adults ( M = 67 years) showed slower rates of response time (RT) improvements than younger adults ( M = 19 years),...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychology and aging 2007-09, Vol.22 (3), p.607-624
Main Authors: Hertzog, Christopher, Touron, Dayna R, Hines, Jarrod C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Adult. Elderly
Aged
Aging
Aging - psychology
Attention
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
Developmental psychology
Elderly people
Feedback
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Individuality
Male
Memory
Memory tests
Mental Recall
Metacognition
Middle Aged
Monitoring
Neuropsychological Tests
Nouns
Older people
Paired-Associate Learning
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reaction Time
Retention (Psychology)
Retrieval
Time
Time Perception
Young adults
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Summary:The authors evaluated age-related time-monitoring deficits and their contribution to older adults' reluctance to shift to memory retrieval in the noun-pair lookup (NP) task. Older adults ( M = 67 years) showed slower rates of response time (RT) improvements than younger adults ( M = 19 years), because of a delayed strategy shift. Older adults estimated scanning latencies as being faster than they actually were and showed poor resolution in discriminating short from long RTs early in practice. The difference in estimated RT for retrieval and scanning strategies predicted retrieval use, independent of actual RT differences. Separate scanning and recognition memory tasks revealed larger time-monitoring differences for older adults than in the NP task. Apparently, the context of heterogeneous RTs as a result of strategy use in the NP task improved older adults' accuracy of RT estimates. RT feedback had complex effects on time-monitoring accuracy, although it generally improved absolute and relative accuracy of RT estimates. Feedback caused older adults to shift more rapidly to the retrieval strategy in the NP task. Results suggest that deficient time monitoring plays a role in older adults' delayed retrieval shift, although other factors (e.g., confidence in the retrieval strategy) also play a role.
ISSN:0882-7974
1939-1498
DOI:10.1037/0882-7974.22.3.607