Older and younger adults use a functionally identical algorithm to select items for restudy during multitrial learning.

We investigated whether aging affects several components of how people select items for study during multitrial learning. Younger and older adults studied paired-associate items and then made delayed judgements of learning (JOLs). Immediately after making a JOL for an item, some participants decided whether to restudy the item on subsequent trials; for other participants, the computer selected for restudy the items that had been judged as least-well learned. Next, paired-associate recall occurred, which was followed by restudy-test trials. As expected, age differences occurred in recall on the first trial, and this difference was propagated across trials. In contrast to the hypothesis that older adults would be more conservative in selecting items, both age groups selected to restudy (a) the items that they had rated as least-well learned and (b) the majority of items that would not be recalled on the first trial. Comparisons between participants who self-selected items vs the groups in which the computer controlled selection also converged on the conclusion of age equivalence in processes underlying item selection.