TEXT‐LEARNING CAPABILITIES OF OLDER ADULTS

Abstract

Many researchers have found that older adults are unable to recall meaningful verbal information (i.e., words, sentences, and instructional text) as well as young adults. Available evidence suggests that the limited recall of older adults may in part result from the inefficient implementation of attentional and organizational processes. Educational gerontol‐ogists must investigate procedures that can increase the efficiency of older adults’ text‐learning skills. It is important that these empirical efforts be guided by models of memory (e.g., Craik's levels‐of‐processing approach) that are applicable to a population of elderly learners. These models can be used to identify text‐learning strategies that are appropriate for older adults. In general, these strategies should stimulate the construction of deep, elaborative memory traces. In particular, they should help older adults to do the following: (1) focus attention on key ideas, (2) organize information for storage and retrieval, and (3) integrate new information with existing, related knowledge.