Training monitoring skills improves older adults' self-paced associative learning.
We investigated a memory-enhancement program that involved teaching older adults to regulate study through self-testing. A regulation group was taught standard strategies along with self-testing techniques for identifying less well-learned items that could benefit from extra study. This group was compared with a strategy-control group, which was taught only strategies, and with a waiting-list control group. Greater training gains were shown for the regulation group (effect size, d = 0.72) than for the strategy-control (d = 0.28) and waiting-list control (d = 0.03) groups, indicating that training a monitoring skill--self-testing--can improve older adults' learning.
Dunlosky
John
J
Psychology Department, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 27402-6164, USA. dunlosky@uncg.edu
Kubat-Silman
Alycia K
AK
Hertzog
Christopher
C
D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D001245:Association Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D008875:Middle Aged; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*