The present study investigated whether older and younger adults use a schem
a to organize and remember spoken reminder messages for taking medication.
Previous research has shown that older and younger adults share preferences
for organizing printed instructions for taking medication, suggesting a sh
ared schema. Older and younger participants in Experiment 1 of the present
study used a similar schema to organize medication reminder messages. This
finding suggests that the medication schema generalizes across communicatio
n purpose (to remind or to instruct) as well as across patient age. Medicat
ion reminder messages were better understood and remembered when organized
to match this schema, whether the reminders were presented as automated tel
ephone messages (Experiment 2) or in printed form (Experiment 3). Schema-co
mpatible organization especially helped people draw inferences from the mes
sages, suggesting that organization helps older and younger adults construc
t a situation model of the medication-taking task from the messages. Potent
ial applications of organized messages include increasing the impact of aut
omated systems for delivering health services.