Value-directed memory selectivity relies on goal-directed knowledge of value structure prior to encoding in young and older adults.

ABSTRACT: People are generally able to selectively attend and remember high-value over low-value information. Here, we investigated whether young and older adults would display typical value-based memory selectivity effects for to-be-learned item-value associations when goal-directed information about the meaning of associated values was presented before and after encoding. In two experiments, both young and older adults were presented with one (Experiment 1) or multiple (Experiment 2) lists of words that were arbitrarily paired with different numerical values (e.g., "door-8") or font colors (e.g., "door" presented in red), which indicated each word's value. In Experiment 1, participants were told that the numerical value indicated the relative importance of each item either before they studied the

SUBMITTER: Schwartz ST 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10023194 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature