Directing Attention to Event Changes Improves Memory Updating for Older Adults

People use memory for observed actions to guide current perceptions. When actions change from one situation to the next, one must register the change to update memory. Research suggests that older adults may sometimes update memory for naturalistic action changes less effectively than younger adults. We examined whether this deficit reflects age differences in attention allocation by cuing attention to changed action features and testing memory for those features. Older (N = 47) and younger (N = 73) adults watched movies of an actor performing everyday activities on two fictive "days" in her life. Some activities began identically on both days (e.g., reaching for dessert) and ended with features that changed across days (e.g., cookie vs. brownie). Half of the changed activities included audio-visual cues on both days that signaled changed features, whereas the other half did not include cues. Memory updating was assessed through cued recall and two-alternative forced choice recognition (2AFC recognition) of recent action 4 features. Cuing attention improved cued recall but not 2AFC recognition of recent action features for both older and younger adults. These recall benefits were associated with improved recollection that changes had earlier occurred. The present findings suggest that although older adults sometimes experience deficits in aspects of attention, using cues to guide their attention to features of everyday activities can enhance their event memory updating when the later memory test emphasizes recollection-based retrieval.