Km. Riggs et al., TAKING CHARGE OF REMEMBERING LOCUS OF CONTROL AND OLDER ADULTS MEMORYFOR SPEECH, Experimental aging research, 23(3), 1997, pp. 237-256
The relation between control beliefs and recall of spoken word lists a
nd prose passages was assessed for 32 older adults, ages 62 to 85, in
a task where they were given control over presentation of stimuli. The
y differed in the degree to which they believed that factors within th
eir control (internals) or outside their control (externals) affected
their intellectual functioning; they were similar in age, education, v
ocabulary, and digit span. They were required to stop the speech input
at points of their own choosing to recall the stimuli on a segment-by
-segment basis. Externals were more likely than internals to make inac
curate predictions of the number of words they could remember and to c
hoose longer segments than they could recall. Results suggest that ext
ernals are poorer than internals in monitoring on-line memory processi
ng.