OLDER ADULTS STRATEGIC SUPERIORITY WITH MENTAL MULTIPLICATION - A GENERATION EFFECT ASSESSMENT

Recent studies suggest that older adults' simple arithmetic fact knowl edge may be superior to that of college students, as evidenced by the older adults' more frequent use of direct memory retrieval (versus com putation) as an answer generation mechanism. Whereas previous studies assessed strategy selection via self-report and/or reaction time, we h ave adopted the ''generation effect'' paradigm-better memory for items that are subject-generated versus those that are simply read. The mem orial advantage of generation depends in part on the degree of effort involved in generating versus reading an item. Because direct retrieva l is less effortful than computation, we expected qualitative age diff erences in answer generation strategies to manifest themselves as age differences in the magnitude of the generation effect, especially for problems with larger answers. With simple multiplication problem mater ials, the expected Age X Problem Size interaction was found. In a verb al materials comparison condition, the size of the generation effect d id not differ across adult age.