title: Cognitive skill learning: age-related differences in strategy shifts and speed of component operations.
abstract: Younger and older adults solved novel arithmetic problems and reported the strategies used for obtaining solutions. Age deficits were demonstrated in the latencies for computing and retrieving solutions and in the shift from computation to retrieval. Rates of improvement within age groups were parallel for computations and retrievals, suggesting a single, age-attenuated mechanism that affects practice-related speedup. The age-related delay in strategy shift suggests either reluctance to use retrieval or an associative memory deficit. Experiment 1 showed that skill acquisition was unaffected by the presence and frequency of postresponse strategy probes for both age groups. Experiment 2 showed that pretraining item-learning operations facilitated subsequent item learning and that pretraining either item-learning operations or the algorithm did not alter the age trends.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC 28608, USA. tourond@appstate.edu
authors.forename: Dayna R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Touron
authors.forename: William J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Hoyer
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cerella
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D011340:Problem Solving; D011930:Reaction Time; D012016:Reference Values