TAKING CHARGE OF REMEMBERING LOCUS OF CONTROL AND OLDER ADULTS MEMORYFOR SPEECH

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.