Abstract
It is essential to develop effective interventions aimed at ameliorating age-related cognitive decline. Previous studies found that effortful encoding benefits episodic memory in older adults. However, to date it is unclear whether this benefit is different for individuals with strong versus weak executive functioning (EF). Fifty-one older adults were recruited and divided into low (N = 26) and high (N = 25) functioning groups, based on their EF capacity. All participants performed a semantic and a perceptual incidental encoding task. Each encoding task was performed under four difficulty levels to establish different effort levels. Encoding was followed by a recognition task. Results showed that the high EF group benefitted from increased effort in both tasks. However, the low EF group only showed a beneficial effect under low levels of effort. Results are consistent with the Compensation-Related Utilization of Neural Circuits Hypothesis (CRUNCH) and suggest that future research directed at developing efficient memory strategies to reduce negative cognitive aging effects should take individual cognitive differences among older adults into account, such as differences in EF.
Highlights
In the past few decades, an increasing number of studies have focused on cognitive aging and factors that could counteract adverse aging effects
In a recent study [6] comparing young (YAs) and older adults (OAs), we found that encoding especially enhances later memory retrieval in OAs if encoding takes place under relatively demanding conditions that implicate much cognitive effort
SD = .19) (p < .001), indicating that memory recognition increased with more cognitive effort devoted to memory encoding
Summary
In the past few decades, an increasing number of studies have focused on cognitive aging and factors that could counteract adverse aging effects. In a recent study [6] comparing young (YAs) and older adults (OAs), we found that encoding especially enhances later memory retrieval in OAs if encoding takes place under relatively demanding conditions that implicate much cognitive effort. This effect is in accordance with the environmental-compensation view [6,7,8], which states that high task demands may encourage OAs to use their limited cognitive resources in a more efficient way, thereby compensating for their cognitive deficits. The amount of cognitive effort invested in a task, which later
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