Do pictures help to memorize? The influence of item presentation and executive functions on everyday memory in older adults

Abstract

Ageing is associated with a declining memory performance. This phenomenon has been extensively investigated in different laboratory settings, while the transferability from laboratory findings to everyday life situations is rather unclear. In fact, everyday life situations have been found to enhance as well as impair older adults’ memory performance. The present study deals with the question which kind of factors influence memory performance of older adults during everyday life situations. Therefore, participants (70.16 ± 5.8 years) were exposed to a supermarket scenario. Their task was to collect previously presented objects in a specified order while objects were either presented as words or pictures in correct or randomized order. Additionally, participants performed the Stroop test, Trail making test and Bochumer Matrizen test, in order to determine a possible predictability of the performance of these tasks and everyday life performance. Results showed that older adults had more problems to memorize items in the more challenging (randomized item presentation) task but presentation via pictures could offset this effect.

Keywords

• ecological validity
• naturalistic task
• memory
• aging
• item presentation
• executive functions