Teaching older adults to use retrieval practice improves their self-regulated learning.

Retrieval practice can reduce associative memory deficits for older adults but they underutilize this potent learning tool during self-regulated learning. The current experiment investigated whether teaching older adults to use retrieval practice more can improve their self-regulated learning. Younger and older adults made decisions about when to study, how often to engage in retrieval practice, and when to stop learning a list of medication-side effect pairs. Some younger and older adults received instructions before learning that emphasized the mnemonic benefits of retrieval practice over restudying material and described how to schedule retrieval practice to learn to a goal criterion level. This minimal intervention was effective for improving both younger and older adults' associative memory. These data indicate that a simple strategy for improving older adults self-regulated learning is to provide them with instructions that teach them how to use criterion learning to schedule their retrieval practice for to-be learned material.