OLDER AND YOUNGER ADULTS USE A FUNCTIONALLY IDENTICAL ALGORITHM TO SELECT ITEMS FOR RESTUDY DURING MULTITRIAL LEARNING

We investigated whether aging affects several components of how people select items for study during multitrial learning. Younger and older adults studied paired-associate items and then made delayed judgments of learning (JOLs). Immediately after making a JOL for an item, some p articipants decided whether to restudy the item on subsequent trials; for other participants, the computer selected for restudy the items th at had been judged as least-well learned. Next, paired-associate recal l occurred, which was followed by restudy-test trials. As expected, ag e differences occurred in recall on the first trial, and this differen ce was propagated across trials. In contrast to the hypothesis that ol der adults would be more conservative in selecting items, both age gro ups selected to restudy (a) the items that they had rated as least-wel l learned and (b) the majority of items that would not be recalled on the first trial. Comparisons between participants who self-selected it ems vs the groups in which the computer controlled selection also conv erged on the conclusion of age equivalence in processes underlying ite m selection.