Krueger Lacy E
Texas A&M University-Commerce.
Educ Gerontol. 2012;38(9):604-615. doi: 10.1080/03601277.2011.595327. Epub 2012 Jun 13.
Past studies have suggested that study time allocation partially mediates age relations on memory performance in a verbal task. To identify whether this applied to a different material modality, participants ages 20-87 completed a spatial task in addition to a traditional verbal task. In both the verbal and the spatial task, increased age was associated with poorer utilization of study time, suggesting that age differences in study time allocation are qualitatively similar across material modality. Furthermore, age differences in how individuals allocated their study time partially mediated the age relations on memory performance in both tasks, indicating the importance of effective regulation of study time when learning information. Finally, age differences in study time allocation did not appear to be due to differences in awareness of performance. When a subset of participants was asked about their prior performance, awareness of previous performance was not associated with study time allocation on either task. Interestingly, asking participants about their prior performance tended to decrease recall performance. Overall, these results illustrate that how one allocates study time is related to subsequent memory performance in both a verbal and spatial modality, but knowledge about prior performance is not associated with study time utilization, and inquiring about past performance during study may disrupt rather than facilitate learning.
以往的研究表明，在言语任务中，学习时间分配在一定程度上介导了年龄与记忆表现之间的关系。为了确定这是否适用于不同的材料模态，20至87岁的参与者除了完成传统的言语任务外，还完成了一项空间任务。在言语任务和空间任务中，年龄增长都与学习时间利用效率降低有关，这表明学习时间分配上的年龄差异在不同材料模态下在性质上是相似的。此外，个体在学习时间分配方式上的年龄差异在一定程度上介导了两项任务中年龄与记忆表现之间的关系，这表明在学习信息时有效调节学习时间的重要性。最后，学习时间分配上的年龄差异似乎并非由于对表现的认知差异所致。当一部分参与者被问及他们之前的表现时，对之前表现的认知与两项任务中的学习时间分配均无关联。有趣的是，询问参与者他们之前的表现往往会降低回忆表现。总体而言，这些结果表明，一个人如何分配学习时间与言语和空间模态下的后续记忆表现都有关，但对之前表现的了解与学习时间利用并无关联，且在学习过程中询问过去的表现可能会干扰而非促进学习。
