Investigating how prior task success improves memory performance in older adults

Texas A&M University, College Station TX

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY Investigating how prior task success improves memory performance in older adults Given the many negative societal and cultural beliefs about memory and aging, many older adults worry that they are losing their memory. Holding negative beliefs about memory has been shown to lead older adults to perform poorly on standard memory tests. We have found that having older adults successfully complete a prior cognitive task improves their performance on a later unrelated memory test, relative to having no task success or to failing at a task. The overarching aim of this project is to extend these promising results to additional memory testing conditions and to determine the mechanism by which prior task success improves older adults' memory performance. In particular, we will test the hypothesis that task success improves memory performance by increasing self-efficacy and decreasing test anxiety. From a practical point of view, prior task success could provide a new methodological template for improving older adults' memory performance in and out of the lab. Results from this line of work would also demonstrate that age-associated memory changes are influenced not only by cognitive and neurological mechanisms, but also by potentially controllable contextual factors.