Too Hard to Try Hard: Young and Older Adults’ Memory Strategy Selection

Indianapolis, IN

Young adults (YA) and older adults (OA) report using different strategies to control age-related memory decline. We examined two factors that could potentially influence their strategy selection. 111 YA and 58 OA rated the likelihood of use, effectiveness, and difficulty of various types of strategies. OA reported greater use of cognitive health, positive attitude, and physical health strategies compared to YA; YA reported a greater likelihood of using effort and internal strategies. Paralleling these results, OA perceived cognitive health, positive attitude, and physical health as more effective than YA, but the two groups did not differ in their perceived effectiveness of other strategy types. Finally, OA described cognitive health, positive attitude, and physical health as easier to implement than YA. In terms of strategy selection, perceived effectiveness was the strongest predictor of utilizing internal strategies, cognitive health, positive attitude, external aids and effort and was the second strongest predictor of utilizing physical health strategies. Perceived difficulty was the strongest predictor of using physical health approaches, and also significantly predicted using cognitive health, positive attitude, external aids and effort. For external aids and effort, the effectiveness x age group and difficulty x age group interactions also reached significance. Together, our results suggest that YA and OA most commonly select strategies based on their beliefs about effectiveness, while also considering the difficulty of each approach. Although both age groups consider the same factors, YA and OA differentially weigh them when deciding when to utilize some strategy types to improve their memory.