Goals and Motivation to Remember Important Information in Old Age

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ABSTRACT Changes in memory are one of the most common concerns of older adults. The proposed research examines how goals can motivate and improve memory in older adults through a strategic focus on selectively remembering important information. We first test how older adults can learn to focus on what is important when experiencing stress or arousal from rushing. Relative to younger adults, older adults may feel greater stress and anxiety due to rushing, when rapidly presented with large amounts of information, but can still engage in selective encoding of important information with practice under some conditions. Indeed, older adults can be motivated by responsible remembering and a fear of forgetting (such as when needing to remember a child's allergies). We will determine if older adults can engage in the control of selective forgetting and updating information using a directed forgetting task, where one has to selectively remember items that they are responsible for bringing on a trip. By being able to forget outdated information older adults can use memory in an efficient manner, and remember when information has changed in value, especially in terms of positive and negative values. We will also examine how older adults may focus on selectively remembering changes in financial gains, possibly at the expense of remembering losses, such as changes in stock prices or updated to a retirement plan. There are practical applications of selective memory in older age, as one consequence of selectively focusing attention and memory is a potential bias toward gains and rewards. For example, older adults may be particularly susceptible to financial fraud and related scams because they selectively focus on positive outcomes and frequently experience loneliness. Thus, older adults may focus on the enticing opportunity presented in a scam, and the potential rewards, but fail to attend to or later remember risks or suspicious aspects of the proposition. We will examine how selectivity can lead to bias in older adults and how selective memory can be effectively redirected toward critical aspects of a potential scam with repeated testing, thus reducing susceptibility to financial victimization. A memory-testing program to identify scams will be developed to determine if training can transfer and assist older adults in effectively identifying other forms of scams, by enhancing selective memory away from potential positive outcomes and towards signs of deceptive offers, such as advance-fee fraud. Overall, the proposed work can help older adults selectively remember important information, learn how to selectively forget outdated information regarding gains and losses and help older adults identify features of scams, providing several novel and innovative avenues of research that integrate theoretical and translational aspects of memory and aging.