# Optimizing memory strategy use in young and older adults: The role of metamemory and internal strategy use

Lina Guerrero Sastoque, Badiâa Bouazzaoui, Lucile Burger, Charlotte Froger, Michel Isingrini, Laurence Taconnat

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## To cite this version:

Lina Guerrero Sastoque, Badiâa Bouazzaoui, Lucile Burger, Charlotte Froger, Michel Isingrini, et al. Optimizing memory strategy use in young and older adults: The role of metamemory and internal strategy use. Acta Psychologica, 2019, 192, pp.73-86. 10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.11.002. hal-01957297

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# Optimizing memory strategy use in young and older adults: The role of metamemory and internal strategy use

Lina Guerrero Sastoque*, Badiâa Bouazzaoui, Lucile Burger, Charlotte Froger, Michel Isingrini, Laurence Taconnat*

Université de Tours, Université de Poitiers & UMR CNRS CeRCA 7295, 3 rue des Tanneurs, BP 4103 37041 Tours Cedex 1, France

We explored whether experiencing differential efficacy of reading and generation for memory in an initial learning trial led younger and older adults to improve recall of read items in a subsequent learning trial, leading to a reduction of the generation effect. In the first trial, generation improved the memory performance of both young and older adults. However, in Trial 2, the generation effect remained significant for older adults only, confirming that they did not change the way they processed read items, unlike the young adults. The older adults were also less spontaneously aware that generation led to better memory performance in the first trial, and, in contrast to the young adults, awareness did not result in a reduction of the generation effect. Moreover, the agerelated differences in generation effect reduction were mediated by an independent measure of self-reported internal strategy use. However, when an appropriate environmental support was provided between both trials, older adults improved read items recall at the second trial as well as younger ones, leading to an elimination of the generation advantage for both groups. Environmental support reduced the implication of internal strategy use in the generation effect reduction, suggesting that age-related differences in the implementation of effective encoding processes in Trial 2 would be the consequence of a metamemory deficit, and reduced capacity to selfiniti internal strategies.

## Key-words

Memory strategies, Aging, Generation Effect, metamemory, flexibility, internal strategies.

## 1. Introduction

Memory strategies are cognitive processes implemented for optimal achievement of a learning goal. Consequently, memory performance depends largely on how people select and carry out strategies, and many studies have shown that the age-related decline in episodic memory might partly come from a deficit in strategic behavior (e.g., Lemaire, 2010; Taconnat & Lemaire, 2014). The *strategy-deficit hypothesis in aging* states that age-related decline in strategy implementation contributes to the decline of memory performance observed in aging (Bailey, Dunlosky, & Hertzog, 2009). Different studies have shown that individual differences in strategy implementation account for a reliable amount of variance in memory performance (e.g., Dunlosky & Hertzog, 1998; Dunlosky & Hertzog, 2001; Froger, Bouazzaoui, Isingrini, & Taconnat, 2012; Hertzog, McGuire, & Lineweaver, 1998; Sanders, Murphy, Schmitt, & Walsh, 1980; Taconnat et al., 2006; Taconnat et al., 2009; Taconnat, Clarys, Vanneste, Bouazzaoui, & Isingrini, 2007). The age-related deficit in strategy implementation could be explained within the metamemory framework

(e.g., Blatt-Eisengart & Lachman, 2004; Dunlosky & Connor, 1997; Froger, Sacher, Gaudouen, Isingrini, & Taconnat, 2011; Nelson & Narens, 1990; Souchay & Isingrini, 2004a). From this perspective, older adults would be less likely than younger ones to monitor and control their learning efficiently, in particular when self-initiated processing is required. Self-initiated encoding is a cognitively demanding task involving the capacity to implement internal processes allowing to improve learning, this capacity decline with aging, which may prevent older adults from implementing appropriate memory strategies (Craik, 1983, 1986). Using a multi-trial Generation Effect protocol (Bjork, de Winstanley, & Storm, 2007; Bjork & Storm, 2011; Burnett & Bodner, 2014; de Winstanley & Bjork, 2004; Storm, Hickman, & Bjork, 2016), the current study allowed us to examine how the age-related deficits in both metamemory and internal strategy use prevent older adults from self-initiating efficient strategies at learning, and to examine the effect of this strategic deficit on the age-related decline in episodic memory.
1.1. Memory strategies and metamemory in aging

According to Nelson and Narens (1990), memory processes com-
prise two interrelated levels, memory and metamemory. Metamemory
encompasses two main processes: monitoring and control (Nelson &
Narens, 1990). Monitoring is the process whereby individuals assess
their metacognitive knowledge, i.e. knowledge about the tasks, strate-
gies, nature of the information and their own memory skills. Control
refers to the self-regulation or adaptive processes that are executed in
order to implement, sustain or change a strategy according to the task
goal and to the information provided by the monitoring process (Nelson
& Narens, 1990). The “monitoring-affects-control hypothesis” states
that regulation of the memory processes depends on metacognitive
knowledge (Nelson, 1996).

Studies examining monitoring in aging have showed that some as-
pects of monitoring as for example, judgement of learning accuracy
(Dunlosky & Hertzog, 2000; Kuhlmann & Touron, 2011), global pre-
diction accuracy (Matvey, Dunlosky, Shaw, Parks, & Hertzog, 2002;
Woo, Schmitter-Edgecombe, & Fancher, 2008) or feeling of knowing
(FOK) accuracy (MacLaverty & Hertzog, 2009; Hertzog, Dunlosky, &
Sinclair, 2010; but see Perrotin, Isingrini, Souchay, Clarys, & Taconnat,
2006; Sacher, Isingrini, & Taconnat, 2013; Souchay, Isingrini, &
Espagnet, 2000; Souchay, Moulin, Clarys, Taconnat, & Isingrini, 2007;
Thomas, Bulevich, & Dubois, 2011, for different results) are spared of
aging decline. However, several studies have shown that the ability to
monitor and learn about the efficacy of different strategies from ex-
perience decline with aging. Updating metamemory knowledge is
considered to be important for the implementation of efficient memory
strategies. After experiencing the efficacy of different strategies, older
adults are less aware of their differential efficacy than their younger
counterparts (Bieman-Copland & Charness, 1994; Brigham & Pressley,
1988; Matvey et al., 2002; but see Dunlosky & Hertzog, 2000, for dif-
ferent results), and thus less likely to use more efficient strategies for
subsequent learning.

Furthermore, the aging literature suggests that the control compo-
nent of metamemory is impaired in old age. Older adults have difficulty
regulating their learning efficiently (e.g., Dunlosky & Connor, 1997;
Froger et al., 2011; Murphy, Sanders, Gabriesheski, & Schmitt, 1981;
Souchay & Isingrini, 2004b). For instance, Souchay and Isingrini
(2004b) showed that, in contrast to young adults, older participants did
not adjust their strategies to task difficulty. In their study, participants
had to learn different word lists varying in length. Their results showed
that the younger adults allocated more study time and rehearsed longer
than the older participants as the task become more difficult (longer
list). In sum, older participants did not adjust their study strategy as a
function of the list length. These results relate to a situation in which
task difficulty was manipulated objectively (i.e., short vs. longer list),
but similar results were found in a study in which the level of difficulty
was judged by the participants themselves (Froger et al., 2011). In that
study, the authors examined how aging affected the capacity to use
metacognitive judgments to allocate study time. The encoding condi-
tion was manipulated in order to vary task difficulty, by presenting
associated word pairs under either a reading or a generation condition.
Participants were asked to predict their subsequent performance for
both encoding conditions, and to learn the word pairs at their own pace.
Both age groups predicted lower recall of the generated words, in-
dicating that they considered that generated items were more difficult
to learn. The results showed that the younger adults increased their
study time at learning based on their judgments about difficulty, i.e.,
they studied generated words longer than read words, whereas the
older adults did not vary their study time between the two conditions.
This suggests that the older adults did not adapt their strategies based
on their judgments of learning to the same degree as the younger adults
did.

Thus, older adults exhibit difficulty using the outcomes of the
monitoring process to adapt strategy and regulate their learning,

despite the relative accuracy of their judgement about task difficulty,
ease of learning or performance (Dunlosky & Connor, 1997; Froger
et al., 2011; Souchay & Isingrini, 2004a).

1.2. Internal processing and self-initiation of strategies in aging: the
environmental support hypothesis

Another explanation of the age-related memory deficit is that it is
the consequence of a reduction in processing resources (e.g., Craik,
1983, 1986, 1990; Craik & Byrd, 1982). Because processing resources
decrease with age, older adults are less able to implement self-initiated
cognitive operations, which are effortful processes that rely on internal
and control factors (Rabinowitz, Craik, & Ackerman, 1982; Souchay &
Isingrini, 2004b; Taconnat & Isingrini, 2004). Effective memory pro-
cesses depend on the capacity to implement internal strategies adapted
to the task nature and to the context changes. Internal strategies can be
implemented without environmental support (e.g., mental imagery or
rehearsal) and thus self-initiated either at encoding or at retrieval. In-
ternal strategies could be considered as internal rules permitting to
control behavior through the implementation of complex sequences of
behavior allowing to reach the task goal (Barkley, 1997, 2001). A
growing body of literature using objective measures as semantic as-
sociates generation (Sauzéon, N'Kaoua, & Claverie, 2001; Taconnat,
Froger, Sacher, & Isingrini, 2008), mental imagery, or making sentences
(Dunlosky & Hertzog, 2000; Dunlosky, Hertzog, & Powell-Moman,
2005; Naveh-Benjamin, Brav, & Levy, 2007) and subjective measures as
self-reported internal strategy (Bouazzaoui et al., 2010) have showed
that capacity to implement internal strategies declines with aging.

The environmental support hypothesis (Craik, 1990) of memory
aging suggests that age-related memory deficits increase when memory
encoding and/or retrieval require the use of self-initiated (internal)
processes. However, the internal processes demands of the task are
reduced when memory operations are driven by an external aid (e.g.
guidance for information encoding, prior knowledge, presence of ex-
ternal cues at encoding or retrieval). The processing resource demands
of the task decrease as external aid increases. Consequently, the age-
related processing deficit is reduced, because older adults can imple-
ment efficient strategies and thus improve their memory performance
(Craik, 1983, 1986, 1990). The effect of support has been confirmed by
using different kinds of instruction (e.g., generation of semantic as-
sociates: Froger, Taconnat, Landré, Beigneux, & Isingrini, 2009;
Sauzéon et al., 2001; Taconnat et al., 2008; mental imagery, or sen-
tences using the word to be learned: Burger, Uittenhove, Lemaire, &
Taconnat, 2017; Dunlosky & Hertzog, 2000; Dunlosky et al., 2005;
Naveh-Benjamin et al., 2007).

Froger et al. (2012) used both environmental support and a meta-
cognitive approach to examine how study time (ST) allocation is ad-
justed according to the task difficulty. They manipulated the level of
environmental support by varying the amount of information provided
about effective strategies for learning associated word pairs. In the
“without support condition”, no information about strategies was pro-
vided, whereas in the “low support condition”, three mnemonic stra-
tegies were proposed (generation, repetition, and interactive imagery),
and in the “high support condition”, the same strategies as in the low
support condition were provided but the participants were additionally
informed about the efficacy of the strategies. Task difficulty was ma-
nipulated by the presentation of weak (difficult) or strong (easy) as-
sociates. There were two sessions, the first with limited ST and the
second with self-paced ST. Results showed that the younger adults in-
creased their study time for the weak associates under all support
conditions, leading them to improve their recall of this kind of item. By
contrast, the older adults only adjusted their study time to task diffi-
culty in the high support condition. Information about the efficacy of
the strategies was therefore necessary to enable older adults to adjust
their study time to task difficulty. Thus, age-related deficits in meta-
memory control processes can be partly compensated for by providing
information about the efficacy of strategies. This kind of support would
lead participants to become aware of the differential efficacy of stra-
tegies and to use this acquired metamemory knowledge effectively to
adjust their strategy to the nature of the task.

1.2.1. *Strategy change in a word generation vs. reading paradigm*

The Generation Effect (GE, Jacoby, 1978; Slamecka & Graf, 1978) refers to a robust retention advantage in memory for material that has been self-generated from a cue-word and a fragment of the target word (e.g., (NECKLACE-Pea-) compared with material that has been simply read (e.g., NECKLACE-Pearl). This better retention of generated information would result from the active process of generation itself, which requires activating the semantic network to which the cue-word belongs, and finding in it the word corresponding to the word fragment, in contrast to information provided by an external source (reading) (e.g. Brown, Niinikoski, & Duke, 1993; Johnson, Schmitt, & Pietrukowicz, 1989; Mitchell, Hunt, & Schmitt, 1986; Rabinowitz, 1989; Taconnat & Isingrini, 1996, Experiment 1; Taconnat, Isingrini, & Vanneste, 2003, Experiment 1; Taconnat & Isingrini, 2004; Whiting, 2003).

Despite the robustness of the GE, the advantage of generation over
reading for memory can be reduced or even eliminated under certain
conditions, for example, by giving instructions about how to encode the
to-be-read information. For instance, when an imagery strategy (Begg,
Vinski, Frankovich, & Holgate, 1991) or specific information about the
test (de Winstanley & Bjork, 1997) were suggested as a way of encoding
the to-be-read items, the GE no longer appeared in young adults.
However, explicit instructions about how to process to-be-read items
are not always necessary to eliminate the generation advantage. For
example, using multiple study-test trials, de Winstanley and Bjork
(2004) showed that the generation advantage could decrease or even be
eliminated in the second trial. Importantly the elimination of the gen-
eration advantage in the second trial was due to the increased recall of
read items associated with a maintenance of recall of generated in-
formation. The authors posited that experiencing the generation ad-
vantage in the first trial led participants to use more effective learning
strategies in the second. Several studies have replicated this pattern of
GE decrease (Bjork et al., 2007; Bjork & Storm, 2011; Burnett & Bodner,
2014; Storm et al., 2016). To examine whether participants were aware
of the generation advantage, de Winstanley and Bjork (2004) asked
participants after Trial 1 whether they had noticed anything about their
performance on the previous memory test. Aware participants were
those who noticed that their memory performance was better for gen-
erated items. The authors found that most of the participants who had
claimed to be aware of the GE at Trial 1 showed improved memory
performance for read items at Trial 2 and consequently a decrease in
the GE. Hence, when individuals are able to judge that an encoding
process is less efficient for learning during its execution, they can re-
place it with a more efficient one. Furthermore, Burnett and Bodner
(2014, Experiment 3) included different metamemory measures before
and after Trial 1 (judgements of learning, prediction for read and
generated items, confidence judgements and postdictions) in order to
examine whether improvement of read items recall at Trial 2 was as-
sociated to a change in metamemory measures, reflecting an awareness
of the generation advantage. They showed that most of these measures
were little sensitive to the recall pattern of the participants. Confidence
judgements (CJs) were the only measures sensitive to the recall per-
formance of participants, confidence judgements were concordant with
the recall pattern observed. However, they concluded that CJs did not
rely on an explicit awareness of the generation effect, participants do
not necessarily identify whether the item has been generated or read to
perform this judgement. They concluded that an implicit metamemory
knowledge of the generation advantage can drive the strategy change in
Trial 2. Burnett and Bodner (2014, Experiment 1) also explored whe-
ther GE reduction at the second trial was associated to a strategy
change. In this experience, at the end of the Trial 2, participants were
asked whether they have changed their strategies across trials. They

observed that 54% of the participants reported a strategy change be-
tween the two blocks, suggesting that read items improvement is not
only a passive benefice of practice but it is associated to an improve-
ment of read items processing. Generation elimination in the second
trial would be associated to an increase of a context strategy use that
consisted in making a link between sentences and targets but also to a
repetition strategy increase. Multiple strategies could be self-initiated in
order to improve read items recall at the second trial.

Storm et al. (2016) proposed that two factors are sufficient to lead participants to improve their encoding strategies in a second trial. Generation effect would be eliminated in a second trial in a greater extent when these two factors are presented. Firstly, experience at Trial 1 allows participants to know the type of memory test that they will take and the nature of the information that has to be encoded, and, consequently, at Trial 2 they would be able to implement efficient strategies leading to a better performance according to the test nature (e.g. cued-target association processing for a cued-recall test). However, Burnett and Bodner (2014) used the same protocol but in Trial 1 participants did not receive a test, they showed that even when participants did not have a test experience in Trial 1, generation effect was eliminated. Test experience could facilitate strategy shifting but it would not be critical to the improvement of read items recall in the second trial. Secondly, experiencing the differential efficacy of two encoding conditions (e.g., generation vs. reading) allows individuals to be aware of the efficiency of generation over reading. Thus, in the second trial, they may change their strategy in order to improve their learning of read items. In both cases, metamemory knowledge acquired by experience in the first trial allows participants to make appropriate changes in their encoding strategies in a subsequent trial. Studies exploring whether the experience of the two encoding conditions in the first trial is critical for the improvement of the read items recall at the second trial have showed contradictory results. de Winstanley and Bjork (2004) showed that when participants experience only one encoding condition at the first Trial (Generation or reading), generation advantage remains significant in the second trial. In contrast the results of Burnett and Bodner (2014) revealed an increase of the read items recall at the second trial leading to a reduction of the generation effect at the second trial, for a group that has not experienced the generation condition in the first trial.

1.3. *The current study*

In their knowledge-updating model, Dunlosky and Hertzog (2000) proposed that people are able to acquire knowledge about strategies from experience, leading them to achieve a subsequent memory task better. This approach proposes that strategies vary in their efficacy for improving memory. In order to modify knowledge about strategies, people must monitor both the strategies they implemented during encoding and their performance at testing. Based on this information, they must associate their performance with the strategies they used, and consequently update their knowledge about these strategies.

Some studies have shown that despite their experience in an initial
trial, older adults do not adjust their metacognitive judgments through
experience as well as their younger participants (e.g. Bieman-Copland &
Charness, 1994; Hertzog, Price, & Dunlosky, 2012; Matvey et al., 2002;
but see Dunlosky & Hertzog, 2000, for different results). Hertzog et al.
(2012) examined how experience and evaluation conditions can affect
metamemory judgments. Participants rated the efficacy of two strate-
gies, imagery and repetition. In the first trial, strategy use was either
"supervised" by the experimenter or "unsupervised". In the "su-
pervised" condition, explicit instructions about the strategy (imagery or
repetition) to use for each item were provided. By contrast, in the
"unsupervised" condition, participants could use their own strategies to
encode information. In the second trial, all participants were un-
supervised. For both groups, efficacy ratings of repetition decreased
while those for imagery increased. In the second trial, the authors
observed that the young adults in the supervised condition showed improved recall, associated with an increase in imagery strategy use. However, knowledge about the differential efficacy of strategies (repetition vs imagery) improved less for the older adults than for the younger ones. Moreover, even when older adults identified the most efficient strategy accurately, they continued to use the easier but less effective one, and no improvement was observed in their recall. From the metacognitive viewpoint, this result is in line with the hypothesis of an age-related decline in knowledge updating about strategy efficacy (Bieman-Copland & Charness, 1994; Brigham & Pressley, 1988; Devolder & Pressley, 1992; Matvey et al., 2002).

The present study was designed to further explore the link between the age-related deficit in the implementation of self-initiated strategies and the decline in metamemory processes. We used a multiple study-test trial protocol, in which participants had to learn two mixed lists of to-be-read and to-be-generated words. Previous studies have shown that this is an interesting task to assess the capacity to change learning strategies from the individuals' own learning experience (de Winstanley & Bjork, 2004). Multiple study-test trial protocols make it possible to examine how strategy knowledge can be acquired through study-test experience. Experience of the first trial allows participants to identify the advantage of generation over reading in their own memory performance, to modify their metamemory knowledge about the efficacy of the two strategies (reading vs generation) and to acquire knowledge about the nature of the test. Improved performance in Trial 2 depends on the capacity to use this metamnesic knowledge to implement effective encoding processes, allowing participants to improve the encoding of read words. In contrast to other studies that have examined metamemory processes using tasks requiring previously acquired metacognitive knowledge (list length: Souchay & Isingrini, 2004a; strength of association: Froger et al., 2012; Word frequency: Tullis & Benjamin, 2012), in the present work, participants did not have prior metacognitive knowledge about GE, and consequently, they had to acquire metacognitive knowledge (generation advantage) from their own experience. Therefore, this protocol enabled us to evaluate the capacity of older adults to identify the differential efficacy of two kinds of encoding through experience. We used a semantic generation task because older adults usually benefit as much as younger ones from the generation condition in this kind of task (e.g. Brown et al., 1993; Johnson et al., 1989; McFarland, Warren, & Crockard, 1985; Mitchell et al., 1986; Pesta, Sanders, & Nemec, 1996; Rabinowitz, 1989; Taconnat et al., 2003; Taconnat & Isingrini, 1996). Therefore, task difficulty would be similar for both age groups. Older adults are able to carry out the two encoding conditions as well as younger adults, guaranteeing that they would not be at a disadvantage for strategy change.

In the present study, two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, we compared the performance of young and older adults by using a protocol similar to the one used by de Winstanley and Bjork (2004) to examine the effect of aging on the reduction of the generation advantage in a second trial. In Experiment 2, specific supporting instructions were provided before Trial 2. We explored whether this environmental support reduced the involvement of internal strategies use in the improvement of read items recall for both groups and consequently compensated for the age-related self-initiation deficit. We examined internal strategies involvement in the generation advantage decrease across trials in both conditions (without support in Experiment 1 vs. with support, Experiment 2). We tested the idea that when improvement of read items encoding have to be self-initiated, they depend on internal cognitive processes. By contrast, the internal demands of the task would decrease when encoding processes implementation is driven by specific external instructions (Experiment 2).

## 2. Experiment 1

In Experiment 1, we tested whether experiencing the test and the generation advantage for memory in an initial trial would lead to a

decrease of generation advantage for both older and younger adults, which would reflect a change of strategies in order to improve the learning of read items in the second trial. In line with several previous studies, we expected to observe the classic effects of aging and generation on memory, with older adults recalling fewer words than younger adults (e.g., Balota, Dolan, & Duchek, 2000; Luo & Craik, 2008; McDaniel, Einstein, & Jacoby, 2008), and better recall of generated than read words (e.g., Jacoby, 1978; Slamecka & Graf, 1978). As previous research (e.g., Taconnat & Isingrini, 2004; Whiting, 2003) have shown generation advantage is observed for both younger and older adults, consequently, no interaction between Age group and Encoding condition (generation or read) was expected.

The novel idea tested here was that older adults would not increase their recall across trials as much as younger ones because they would not change the way they processed read items and that improvement of read items recall at Trial 2 rely on internal strategy use for both older and younger adults. First, we expected a two-way interaction between Age group, Encoding condition and Trial on the number of words recalled, with less improvement in recall between Trial 1 and Trial 2 by older than younger adults, and with greater GE at Trial 2 in the older adults. A Generation Effect Reduction Index (GERI) was calculated, corresponding to the difference between the GE at Trial 1 (GE1) and at Trial 2 (GE2), and this index was used in the correlational and regression analyses. Previous studies have suggested that GE decrease would reflect an improvement of encoding strategies at Trial 2 (Bjork et al., 2007; Bjork & Storm, 2011; Burnett & Bodner, 2014; de Winstanley & Bjork, 2004; Storm et al., 2016). We expected that the GERI would be lower for the older than the younger adults.

Secondly, we hypothesized that awareness of the generation advantage would influence the decrease of the generation effect, and that the older adults would be less aware of the generation advantage than the younger ones, suggesting an impairment of monitoring processes. To test these hypotheses, we included a metamemory question after Trial 1 to assess the awareness of the relative benefits of generation over reading. Two groups were formed in each age group as a function of their response to this question (e.g., aware, non-aware). In line with de Winstanley and Bjork (2004), we expected to observe more generation effect reduction in Trial 2 among the young “aware” than “non-aware” adults, explicit knowledge acquired from experience about the differential efficacy of the two encoding conditions would facilitate the improvement of the read items encoding at Trial 2. By contrast, for older adults, two hypotheses could be formulated. (1) As older adults might be less aware of the differential efficacy of generation and reading, they would be less likely to increase read items recall because they would not have acquired the metamnesic knowledge required for improve read items encoding. However, older adults who were “aware” would increase read items recall to the same extent as younger adults. In that case, age-related differences in generation effect reduction would be associated with an age-related impairment of monitoring processes. (2) Older adults would have difficulty using their metacognitive knowledge to improve read items encoding because of their metamemory control process deficit (e.g., Dunlosky & Connor, 1997; Froger et al., 2011; Murphy et al., 1981; Souchay & Isingrini, 2004b). Consequently, “aware” older adults would improve less than younger ones read items recall.

Thirdly, to test the assumption that generation effect reduction rely in internal processes, we conducted a correlational analysis between the GERI and a subjective indicator of internal processes: the frequency of internal strategy use from the Metamemory in the Adulthood Questionnaire (MIA: Dixon, Hultsch, & Hertzog, 1988). We considered that frequency of internal strategy use is an indicator of the capacity to carry out self-initiated internal processes, which could be needed to implement appropriate encoding and retrieval processes (Zacks, Hasher, & Li, 2000). The capacity to change the way read items are processed in Trial 2 would depend on the capacity to self-initiate internal strategies. In this case, the environment does not provide cues
facilitating strategy implementation. Thus, self-initiated internal strategies are needed to process information. This hypothesis would be confirmed if the internal strategy use score would correlate significantly with GERI for both age groups. In addition, we conducted a regression analysis to determine whether internal strategy use could partly explain the age-related differences in the generation effect reduction. Older adults would not increase read items recall at Trial 2 because it is difficult for them to implement efficient internal strategies spontaneously leading to improve read items processing.

## 2.1. Method

### 2.1.1. Participants and background measures

Sixty healthy French adults living in a medium-sized metropolitan area took part in the study. They were divided into two age groups: 30 young adults (aged 25-40) and 30 older adults (aged 60-74). They were volunteers and were recruited from leisure clubs and the Senior Citizens' University. In order to minimize any cohort effect, none of the young participants were recruited from higher education institutions. Participants were screened for their level of formal education (measured by the number of years of education<fnref n="1" />), vocabulary (Mill-Hill test; Raven, Court, & Raven, 1986), depression and anxiety (HADS, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, HADS, Zigmond & Snaith, 1983). The older adults also completed the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE, Folstein, Folstein, & McHugh, 1975), with the cutoff threshold set at 27 to reduce the risk of including participants with cognitive dysfunction or preclinical dementia. Individuals who scored over 11 points on any subscale of the HADS, those with a history of alcohol abuse, brain injury or taking medication likely to affect their intellectual abilities were excluded from the sample. Background measures are reported in Table 1. The study was approved by the ethics committee of the University of Tours (France), and all participants signed a consent form. As shown in Table 1, the two groups did not differ in educational level or vocabulary. At the end of the experiment, the participants were debriefed about the general goal of the study.

### 2.1.2. Materials and design

#### 2.1.2.1. Episodic memory, generation effect, strategy change.
Sixty semantically related concrete word pairs (6- to 9-letter French nouns) (e.g., house-window) drawn from the Lieury, Iff, and Duris (1976) and Oléron and Legall (1962) tables were used in this experiment. These word pairs were then divided randomly into two lists of 30 word pairs (A and B). The two lists were counterbalanced across tests in order to avoid a list effect. In each trial (Trial 1 and Trial 2), participants learned 30 word pairs, half of these words were learned in a reading condition (house-window) and the other half in a generation condition (house-wind). In the generation condition, the last two letters of the second words were missing in order to maximize the possibility of generating the words. Target items in the read and generation conditions were counterbalanced across participants. The participants were instructed to saying both the cue and the target word aloud for reading and generation condition. They were told that if they could not generate the word, the experimenter would give them the solution. However, in this experiment, all the participants correctly generated all the words. Word pairs were presented for 5 s in a random order, with an interstimulus time of 1 s, for both encoding conditions. The participants were instructed to pay particular attention to the second words (presented on the right), which they had to try to memorize. In order to guarantee that the participants have understood the instruction, before the first trial a familiarization phase was conducted. Familiarization phase consisted in the presentation of three to generate and three to read word pairs, participants were asked to memorize the second word. After

that the cued word was presented and participants were asked to recall the target. The instruction for intentional learning is important because it allowed the participants to implement additional encoding processes if they thought that this would help them to learn the words. This would not be possible with an incidental learning task. To prevent any recency effect, participants performed a short interference task at the end of the learning stage (making simple additions for one minute). After that, a cued-recall test with no time constraint was carried out, in which each cue word was presented and the participant was asked to recall the word associated with it; cues words were presented in a randomized way. Two dependent variables were derived from this test: the proportion of correctly recalled words presented in the “read” and “generated” conditions, representing the episodic memory measure, and aGE effect index (GE1) (i.e. the difference between the proportion of generated and read words recall).

After this first memory test, the participants answered a memory question to measure their awareness of the GE: “Did you notice anything particular concerning your performance in the previous memory test?”. They responded by “yes” or “no”, and participants who answered yes were asked to give details. Their answers were coded in two categories according to whether generation advantage was noticed or not (aware vs. non aware). Aware participants were those that reported having recalled more generated than read items (e.g. “incomplete word are better recalled”; “words to complete are easier to learn”, etc.), while non aware participants were those that answered “no” to the first question or that reported something different about their recall than the GE. Individuals noticing Generation advantage (aware participants) were identified for each age group.

Next, after a few minutes of rest, participants carried out the second Trial, under the same conditions as Trial 1. The same two dependent variables as for Trial 1 were derived from Trial 2, namely the proportion of correctly recalled words presented in “read” and “generated” conditions representing the episodic memory measure, and a GE index (GE2). In addition, we calculated a Generation Effect Reduction Index (GERI), corresponding to the difference between the GE at Trial 1 (GE1) and the GE at Trial 2 (GE2). This index was calculated as follows: $[(proportion of generated words recall T1-proportion of read words recall T1)-(proportion of generated words recall T2-proportion of read words recall T2)]$. Using this formula, a higher index corresponds to a greater reduction of the generation effect between trials. de Winstanley and Bjork (2004) proposed that generation effect reduction between trials would be associated to an improvement of processing strategies used to learn read items. This index served as the dependent variable in correlation and regression analyses.

At the end of Trial 2, the participants were asked another memory question concerning any strategy change (Self-reported Strategy Change Index), namely, whether they had changed their learning strategy for this trial. The number of “yes” answers was calculated (participants who changed their learning strategy between trials). Note that all the participants who changed strategy had given an “aware” response to the first metamemory question.

#### 2.1.2.2. Internal strategies use.
In this study we used the Internal Strategy subscale from the French version of the abridged MIA (Boucheron, 1995; Fort, 2005) as an indicator of the capacity to carry out self-initiated processes. The Internal Strategy subscale measures self-reported use of internal mnemonics; it is composed of 8 items (e.g. imagery, mental retracing) rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = never, 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, 4 = often, 5 = always). The maximum possible score is 40, high scores indicating frequent use of internal strategies.

## 2.2. Results

Preliminary analyses tested the effects of age on the memory measures (1). The data are summarized in Table 2. We then tested the effect

<footnote n="1">¹ Concerning post-high school training, all formal academic training with a duration of at least one year are taking into account.</footnote>
<table><caption>**Table 1**

Characteristics of participants in Experiment 1.</caption><caption>a. Characteristics of participants as a function of age group</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2"></th><th colspan="2">Younger (n = 30)</th><th>Older (n = 30)</th><th rowspan="2">t (58)</th></tr><tr><th>M (SD)</th><th></th><th>M (SD)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>Age</th><td>28.67 (3.92)</td><td></td><td>68.60 (6.27)</td><td></td></tr><tr><th>Educational level</th><td>12.00 (2.23)</td><td></td><td>11.47 (1.76)</td><td>1.02, ns</td></tr><tr><th>Vocabulary</th><td>25.63 (2.75)</td><td></td><td>26.13 (3.13)</td><td>-0.66, ns</td></tr></tbody></table>

<table><caption>b. Characteristics of participants as a function of the awareness group and the age group</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="3"></th><th colspan="2">Aware (n = 26)</th><th rowspan="3">t (24)</th><th colspan="2">Non-aware (n = 34)</th><th rowspan="3">t (32)</th></tr><tr><th rowspan="2">Younger (n = 19)</th><th>Older</th><th rowspan="2">Younger (n = 11)</th><th>Older</th></tr><tr><th>(n = 7)</th><th>(n = 23)</th></tr><tr><th></th><th>M (SD)</th><th>M (SD)</th><th></th><th>M (SD)</th><th>M (SD)</th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>Age</th><td>28.21 (3.39)</td><td>69.86 (5.11)</td><td></td><td>29.45 (4.78)</td><td>68.21 (6.63)</td><td></td></tr><tr><th>Educational level</th><td>12.47 (2.19)</td><td>12.00 (2.38)</td><td>.47 ns</td><td>11.18 (2.14)</td><td>11.30 (1.58)</td><td>-0.19 ns</td></tr><tr><th>Vocabulary</th><td>25.47 (2.87)</td><td>25.57 (1.51)</td><td>-0.08 ns</td><td>25.91 (2.62)</td><td>26.30 (3.48)</td><td>-0.33 ns</td></tr></tbody></table>

Note: ns: not significant.

n = number of participants.

SD = Standard Deviation.

<table><caption>**Table 2**

Experiment 1: Means (and SD) of words recalled by encoding condition and trial, GE by trial, GERI and Internal strategy use.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2"></th><th colspan="2">Younger (n = 30)</th><th>Older (n = 30)</th><th rowspan="2">t (58)</th></tr><tr><th>M (SD)</th><th>M (SD)</th><th>M (SD)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th colspan="5">Memory</th></tr><tr><th>Recall of read words 1</th><td>0.62 (0.14)</td><td>0.34 (0.08)</td><td>9.15***</td><td></td></tr><tr><th>Recall of generated words 1</th><td>0.78 (0.12)</td><td>0.47 (0.17)</td><td>8.09***</td><td></td></tr><tr><th>GE Trial 1</th><td>0.16 (0.21)</td><td>0.13 (0.16)</td><td>0.69 ns</td><td></td></tr><tr><th>Recall of read words 2</th><td>0.77 (0.07)</td><td>0.38 (0.13)</td><td>14.75***</td><td></td></tr><tr><th>Recall of generated words 2</th><td>0.77 (0.08)</td><td>0.51 (0.21)</td><td>6.28***</td><td></td></tr><tr><th>GE Trial 2</th><td>0.002 (0.07)</td><td>0.13 (0.18)</td><td>-3.83***</td><td></td></tr><tr><th>GERI<sup>a</sup></th><td>0.16 (0.19)</td><td>0.007 (0.20)</td><td>3.36**</td><td></td></tr><tr><th>Internal strategy use</th><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><th>Internal strategy</th><td>27.90 (2.55)</td><td>21.83 (4.15)</td><td>6.82***</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

Note: ns = not significant.

** p < 0.01.

*** p < 0.001.

<sup>a</sup> GERI: This index corresponds to the difference in the GE between Trial 1 and Trial 2.

of age on both self-reported awareness of GE and self-reported strategy change and the effect of awareness on the GERI (2). The last part of the analyses explored age-related differences in internal strategy use measure and the relationships between this variable and GERI (3) in order to examine whether this variable was a potential mediator of GE reduction from Trial 1 to Trial 2 (4).

### 2.2.1. Effects of age, encoding condition and trial on word recall

In this experiment, both younger and older adults correctly generated 100% of the words. Thus, the analyses were conducted on the proportion of words recalled, without correction for potentially non-generated words (i.e., number of words recalled/15). The data are summarized in Table 2. A 2 (Age group: younger vs. older) × 2 (Encoding condition: read vs generated) × 2 (Trial: 1 vs. 2) repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed on memory performance. It revealed a main significant effect of Age group, $F(1,58) = 147.37, p < 0.001, \eta_p^2 = 0.72$, showing that more words were recalled by younger than by older adults. The effect of Encoding

condition [$F(1,58) = 37.81, p < 0.001, \eta_p^2 = 0.39$] and the effect of Trial were significant [$F(1,58) = 27.45, p < 0.001, \eta_p^2 = 0.32$]. The interaction between Encoding condition and Trial was significant, $F(1,58) = 9.59, p < 0.01, \eta_p^2 = 0.14$, indicating that generation recall did not change between trials while read words recall increased from Trial 1 to Trial 2. The interactions between Age group and Encoding condition, and between Age group and Trial were not significant ($F(1,58) = 1.79, ns$ and $F(1,58) = 1.79, ns$ respectively). The two-way interaction between Age group, Encoding condition and Trial was significant, $F(1,58) = 11.30, p < 0.01, \eta_p^2 = 0.16$, indicating that the GE differed as a function of Age group and Trial. As shown in Fig. 1, both younger and older adults beneficiated from the generation advantage in the Trial 1 [$t(58) = 0.69, ns$]. In contrast in the second trial, generation advantage is observed only for older adults but not for the younger ones [$t(58) = -3.83, p < 0.001$].

To examine this significant two-way interaction in greater depth, two partial ANOVAs were conducted on read and generated words separately to examine the effects of Age group and Trial on the recall of these words.

#### 2.2.1.1. Effect of Age group and Trial in read and generated words

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 1.** Experiment 1: Mean proportion and standard error of the generation effect by age group and trial.</figcaption></figure>
recall. The ANOVA 2 (Age group: younger vs. older) × 2 (Trial: 1 vs. 2) conducted on the number of recalled words showed a main effect of Age group on the recall of read words, $F(1, 58) = 190.28, p < 0.001$, $\eta_p^2 = 0.77$, and generated words, $F(1,58) = 62.74, p < 0.001$, $\eta_p^2 = 0.52$, older adults recalling fewer words than younger ones under both conditions. A main effect of Trial, $F(1,58) = 36.46, p < 0.001$, $\eta_p^2 = 0.38$, and the interaction between Age group and Trial, $F(1,58) = 13.56, p < 0.001$, $\eta_p^2 = 0.19$, were observed only for read words, with increased recall at Trial 2. Planned comparisons indicated that read words recall increased significantly at Trial 2 for younger adults $F(1,58) = 47.24, p < 0.001$, $\eta_p^2 = 0.45$, but not for the older participants, $F(1, 58) = 2.78, ns$. By contrast, recall of generated words was similar in Trial 1 and Trial 2 ($F(1,58) = 0.62, ns$) and for both younger and older adults, ($F(1,58) = 2.91, ns$), confirming that the generation advantage reduction observed in younger adults is due to an improvement of read items recall. In line with this results, we compared the GERI averages of younger and older adults. As shown in Table 2, reduction of generation advantage from Trial 1 to Trial 2 was greater for younger adults than for older ones [$t(58) = 3.36, p < 0.01$].

### 2.2.2. Relationship between metamemory and memory

#### 2.2.2.1. Effects of age group on self-reported awareness of GE, and on self-reported strategy change.
Before testing the effect of Age group and self-reported awareness on the reduction of generation effect (measured by GERI), we performed a Chi² test to investigate the distribution of GE awareness at Trial 1 and the self-reported strategy change at Trial 2 as a function of age group. First, two sub-groups of participants were constituted for each age group: Aware (those who answered “yes” to the awareness question and that reported that generated items were better recalled that read items) vs. Non-aware (those who responded “no” to the awareness question or that reported something different to the GE). The characteristics of these sub-groups are presented in Table 1. Among the 26 participants who noticed the generation advantage (aware participants), there were 19 younger adults and 7 older adults, which, according to a chi-square test, is more than would be expected by chance [$\chi^2(1) = 8.21, p < 0.01$]. Older adults were thus less aware of the GE than the younger participants.

Concerning the distribution of self-reported strategy change at Trial 2, only 13 younger adults affirmed that they had changed strategy at Trial 2 (all were “aware” participants). None of the older adults said that they had changed their strategy at Trial 2 [$\chi^2(1) = 14.14, p < 0.001$].

#### 2.2.2.2. Effect of age group and awareness on GERI.
Because awareness varied as a function of educational level [$t(58) = 2.12, p < 0.05$] (Aware: $m = 12.35, SD = 2.21$, vs. Non-aware: $m = 11.26, SD = 1.74$), the number of years of formal education was taken as a covariate to control for a possible educational level effect. Accordingly, a 2 (Age-group) × 2 (Awareness group) analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was conducted to examine the effects of these two variables on the GERI (Fig. 1). It confirmed the main effect of Age group, $F(1,55) = 8.99, p < 0.01$, $\eta_p^2 = 0.14$, indicating that generation advantage was reduced in a lesser extent for older adults than for the younger ones. The main effect of Awareness was not significant, $F(1,55) = 1.29, ns$, but the analysis indicated that the interaction between Age group and Awareness was significant $F(1,55) = 4.05, p < 0.05$, $\eta_p^2 = 0.07$. Planned comparisons showed that generation reduction at Trial 2 was greater for the younger “Aware” adults than for those who were “non-aware” $F(1,55) = 5.56, p < 0.05$, $\eta_p^2 = 0.09$, while the effect of Awareness was not significant in the older adults $F(1,55) < 1$.

### 2.2.3. Relationships between generation effect reduction and internal strategy use

Before testing the relationship between GERI and internal strategy use, we examined the effect of age on this variable. Analyses on the MIA internal strategy use scores showed that older adults reported less use of

<caption>**Table 3**</caption>

Age-related variance in the generation effect reduction index before and after partialling out internal strategy use.

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Variables</th><th>R<sup>2</sup></th><th>R<sup>2</sup> changed</th><th>F</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Step 1</td><td>Age group</td><td>0.14</td><td>0.14<sup>*</sup></td><td>9.58<sup>*</sup></td></tr><tr><td>Step 1</td><td>Internal strategy</td><td>0.37</td><td>0.37</td><td>34.84<sup>***</sup></td></tr><tr><td>Step 2</td><td>Age</td><td>0.37</td><td>0.0005</td><td>0.04 ns</td></tr></tbody></table>

Note: ns = not significant.

* p < 0.05.

*** p < 0.001.

internal strategies than the younger group. Next, we computed Bravais-Pearson correlation between the GERI and the measure of internal strategy use for each age group. The GERI was positively correlated with the use of internal strategies for both younger ($r = 0.64, p < 0.001$) and older adults ($r = 0.44, p < 0.05$), which corroborates the idea that improvement of read items encoding was related to the capacity to implement internal strategy. These correlations are not modified when educational level is partialled out.

### 2.2.4. Regression analyses

The last objective of this study was to examine whether the age-related difference in the reduction of generation effect at Trial 2 was mediated by a deficit in internal strategy use. To this end, hierarchical regression analyses were performed on the GERI. The outcomes of this analysis are presented in Table 3. When age was entered solely in the analysis, it accounted for 14% ($p < 0.01$) of the variance of GERI. However, when age and frequency of internal strategy use were entered in the equation at the same time, the use of internal strategy accounted for 37% ($p < 0.001$) of the variance of GERI and variance explained by age was reduced to a non-significant 0.047%. After the introduction of internal strategies use, the age-related variance was reduced by 99%. Because the contribution of age in explaining GERI variance was no longer significant, frequency of use of internal strategy can be considered as a mediator of the age-related difference in generation advantage reduction from Trial 1 to Trial 2. This is consistent with the idea that the age-related reduction in self-initiated internal strategies use contributes significantly to explain the impairment in effective strategy implementation, contributing to the reduction of generation advantage at Trial 2.

## 2.3. Discussion

In line with previous studies, older adults recalled significantly fewer words than their younger counterparts, but benefited as much from the generation condition (e.g., Brown et al., 1993; Johnson et al., 1989; Rabinowitz, 1989; Taconnat & Isingrini, 2004; Whiting, 2003). Word generation requires semantic processing driven by the task, which allows participants to encode information efficiently and consequently improve their memory performance. In the second trial, consistent with the results of previous studies, younger adults have increased the recall of read items but not the recall of generated items, which consequently decreased the generation effect. Previous studies have suggested that based on their experience in the previous trial, younger adults improve the encoding of read words, resulting in a decrease in the GE. Prior studies have suggested that the improvement of read items recall at second trial would reflect a strategy change based on experience in the first trial (Bjork et al., 2007; Bjork & Storm, 2011; Burnett & Bodner, 2014; de Winstanley & Bjork, 2004; Storm et al., 2016). As hypothesized, older adults continued to benefit from the GE at Trial 2, and did not increase their recall of read words, suggesting that they had not changed the way they processed read items. In line with other studies, these results confirm that older adults have difficulty to self-initiate an efficient strategy change at encoding (e.g. Dunlosky & Hertzog, 1998; Froger et al., 2012; Taconnat et al., 2009).
The results of Experiment 1 also show that the age-related differ-
ence in the generation effect reduction was associated with less
awareness and a lower level of control processes. After experiencing the
generation advantage in the first trial, a larger proportion of younger
than older adults were aware of the GE in the first trial. For the younger
adults, the awareness of de GE could facilitate an improvement of read
items processing. Experience of the differential efficacy of the two
conditions and explicit knowledge of this advantage could facilitate the
strategy change in a second trial for the younger participants. In con-
trast, the results indicate that the older adults had difficulty identifying
the differential efficacy of reading and generation. Moreover, even
when they were aware of the generation advantage for learning, unlike
younger adults, they did not use this information to self-regulate their
learning. They did not self-initiated more efficient encoding strategies
for improve read items recall (Bieman-Copland & Charness, 1994;
Hertzog et al., 2012; Matvey et al., 2002).

The results indicate also that the reduction of the generation effect reflecting strategy change was associated with internal strategy use a cognitive process that decline with aging. More importantly, we showed that this variable accounted for the age-related differences in the reduction of the GE at Trial 2. This suggests that the reduction of generation advantage would involve the implementation of self-initiated internal operations, allowing individuals to improve the encoding of read items. The cognitive resource hypothesis proposes that effortful self-initiated processes decline progressively with age, implying that using internal strategies is challenging for older adults (Craik, 1983, 1986, 1990). Consequently, it would have been difficult for them to self-initiate a process change in Trial 2.

3. Experiment 2

Our second experiment was designed to examine the effect of ex-
ternal support on the decrease of the generation advantage at Trial 2.
First, we examined whether providing environmental support has an
impact in younger adults strategy change and whether it reduces the
age-related difference in the decrease of the generation advantage
through trials, reflecting strategy change. This would be consistent with
the hypothesis that the processing resources required for improve read
items recall are reduced in older adults (Craik, 1983, 1986, 1990). In-
deed, environmental support involves external factors that guide
memory operations and reduce the resource-demanding operations of
the task. Therefore, support could compensate for the age-related im-
pairment in implementing self-initiated operations.

In Experiment 2, after completing Trial 1, participants were in-
formed not only about the advantage of word generation on memory
performance, but also about the reasons accounting for this effect. This
allowed participants to focus their attention on the relationship be-
tween the cue and the target word, and they were encouraged to im-
plement semantic processing for encoding read and generated words,
thereby enhancing associative encoding of information. Two hy-
potheses were tested: (1) Older adults would be able to modify the way
they encoded read items, leading to an improvement of read items re-
call in Trial 2. If our interpretation is correct, both young and older
adults would show increased recall of read items at Trial 2, and the GE
would be reduced in both groups, which, according to de Winstanley
and Bjork (2004), would reflect a change of strategy. (2) Since im-
plementation of an efficient encoding process to improve the learning of
read words is triggered by the support, the decrease of generation ad-
vantage, reflecting strategy change would require less internal strategy
use.

3.1. Method

3.1.1. Participants and background measures

Forty-five healthy French adults took part in this experiment. They
were divided into two independent groups: 22 young adults aged

<table><caption>**Table 4**

Characteristics of participants in Experiment 2.</caption>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th rowspan="2"></th>
      <th>Younger (n = 22)</th>
      <th>Older (n = 23)</th>
      <th rowspan="2">t (43)</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th>M (SD)</th>
      <th>M (SD)</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <th>Age</th>
      <td>30.27 (6.56)</td>
      <td>71.65(7.98)</td>
      <td></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th>Educational level</th>
      <td>13.82 (2.01)</td>
      <td>12.13 (2.59)</td>
      <td>2.42*</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th>Vocabulary</th>
      <td>25.32 (3.90)</td>
      <td>25.56 (3.94)</td>
      <td>-0.21, ns</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

Note: ns = not significant.

n = number of participants.

SD = Standard Deviation.

* p < 0.05.

20-40 years, and 23 older adults aged 60-80 years. The same screening
tests and criteria exclusion as in Experiment 1 were used. As shown in
Table 4, a significant age-related difference was observed in educa-
tional level,<fnref n="2" /> younger participants having a higher educational level
than the older ones, however no significant difference was observed in
vocabulary level measured by the Mill Hill test, Raven (1994) proposed
that this test could be considered as an indicator of general cultural
knowledge, consequently this result suggests that the cultural level of
both age groups seems to be equivalent. Older participants had the
same characteristics as those in Experiment 1. Concerning younger
participants, a significant difference between the younger groups of the
two experiments was observed on the educational level [t(50) = 3.02;
p < 0.001], younger participants of the second experiment having a
higher educational level, but not significant differences were observed
for vocabulary measures [t(50) = -0.34; ns] suggesting that the two
groups had a similar cultural level.

3.1.2. Materials and design

The materials and procedure were the same as in Experiment 1,
except that environmental support was provided after Trial 1. This in-
volved informing participants of the generation advantage, explaining
the efficacy of semantic processing for learning, and encouraging them
to use it for subsequent learning. The first trial was identical to that of
Experiment 1. After Trial 1, the question about the awareness of GE was
asked, and participants who answered “yes” were asked to give details.
If they noticed the GE, they were told that this advantage of recall by
generating items was due to the semantic processing required to gen-
erate the second word and to the association that they noticed between
the two words. Participants who did not notice the GE were told that
they recalled a higher proportion of generated than read items, and
then the same explanation of this advantage was given: “Words gen-
erated from a cue and an incomplete word are better recalled than read
words. The reason is that in order to complete this word, one must seek
in his/her memory the meaning of the first word presented but also
looking for the word associated with it, which begins with certain let-
ters. Finding the link between the two words facilitates memorization,
so for this second list you could try to use this strategy in order to learn
the words”. Thus, they were explicitly informed that the generated
words were better recalled because it required processing the in-
formation semantically, in order to understand the meaning of the cue
word and find a semantically associated word. Participants then carried
out the second trial, which was identical to Experiment 1.

3.2. Results

The data, summarized in Table 5, were analyzed in three ways.
First, we examined the effects of Age group, Encoding condition and

<footnote n="2">² Measured by the number of years of education; concerning post-high school training, all formal academic training with a duration of at least one year are taking into account.</footnote>
<caption>**Table 5**</caption>

Experiment 2: Means (and SD) of words recalled by encoding condition and trial, GE by trial, GERI and Internal strategy use.

<table><thead><tr><th rowspan="2"></th><th colspan="2">Younger (n = 22)</th><th>Older (n = 23)</th><th>t (43)</th></tr><tr><th>M (SD)</th><th>M (SD)</th><th></th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Memory</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Recall of read words 1</td><td>0.64 (0.17)</td><td>0.39 (0.16)</td><td></td><td>5.30***</td></tr><tr><td>Recall of generated words 1</td><td>0.74 (0.14)</td><td>0.47 (0.13)</td><td></td><td>6.79***</td></tr><tr><td>GE Trial 1</td><td>0.10 (0.13)</td><td>0.09 (0.15)</td><td>0.31, ns</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Recall of read words 2</td><td>0.71 (0.19)</td><td>0.46 (0.16)</td><td>4.71***</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Recall of generated words 2</td><td>0.73 (0.20)</td><td>0.48 (0.13)</td><td>4.98***</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>GE Trial 2</td><td>0.01 (0.18)</td><td>0.01 (0.14)</td><td>0.09, ns</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>GERI<sup>a</sup></td><td>0.08 (0.24)</td><td>0.09 (0.20)</td><td>-0.03, ns</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Internal strategy use</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Internal strategy</td><td>27.09 (4.05)</td><td>23.30 (4.05)</td><td></td><td>3.13**</td></tr></tbody></table>

Note: ns = not significant.

** p < 0.01.

*** p < 0.001.

<sup>a</sup> GERI: This index corresponds to the difference in the GE between Trial 1 and Trial 2.

Trial on recall (1). We then focused on the effects of Age on internal strategy use measure (2). Finally, we used correlations to assess the association between GERI and frequency of internal strategy use (3).

### 3.2.1. Effects of age group, encoding condition and trial on word recall

A 2 (Age group) × 2 (Encoding condition) × 2 (Trial) repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed on the number of words recalled. The ANOVA indicated a main significant effect of Age group, $F(1,43) = 45.65, p < 0.001, \eta_p^2 = 0.51$, older adults recalling fewer words than younger ones. The Encoding condition showed a significant effect, $F(1,43) = 11.86, p < 0.01, \eta_p^2 = 0.22$ and the effect of Trial was marginally significant, $F(1,43) = 3.11, p = 0.08 \eta_p^2 = 0.07$, with more words recalled in Trial 2. The interaction between Age group and Encoding condition and between Age group and Trial were not significant ($F(1,43) < 1$). However, the interaction between Encoding condition and Trial was significant, $F(1,43) = 5.28, p < 0.05, \eta_p^2 = 0.11$, indicating that the GE differed between trials. Planned comparisons showed that generated words were better recalled than read words at Trial 1 $F(1,43) = 19.77, p < 0.001, \eta_p^2 = 0.31$, but not at Trial 2, $F(1,43) < 1$. The interaction between Age group, Encoding condition and Trial was not significant, $F(1,43) < 1$, indicating that the changes in the GE between trials were equivalent in the two age groups. As showed in Fig. 2, generation advantage is observed for both younger and older adults in the Trial 1 [$t(43) = 0.31, ns$] but this

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 2.** Experiment 2: Mean proportion and standard error of the generation effect by age group and trial.</figcaption></figure>

generation advantage is eliminated at the second trial for both younger and older adults [$t(43) = 0.09, ns$].

Two other ANOVAs were conducted for the read words and the generated words separately to explore the effects of Age group and Trial on the recall of these words. The analysis showed a main effect of Age group on the recall of read words, $F(1,43) = 34.69; p < 0.001, \eta_p^2 = 45$, and generated words, $F(1,43) = 44.10, p < 0.001, \eta_p^2 = 0.51$, older adults recalling fewer words than the younger ones. A main effect of Trial was observed only for the recall of read items, $F(1,43) = 6.97; p < 0.05, \eta_p^2 = 0.14$; recall of read items increased in Trial 2, but there was no change in the recall of generated words between trials. No significant interaction between Age group and Trial was observed for recall of either read words, $F(1,43) < 1$, or generated words, $F(1,43) < 1$. Recall of read words increased in Trial 2 for both younger and older adults, but no changes were observed in the recall of generated words, suggesting that the decrease in GE was associated with an increase in the recall of read items.

In this second experiment, we showed that when environmental support was provided, non-significant age differences were observed in the GERI [$t(43) = -0.03, ns$]. In order to confirm the beneficial role of the environmental support on GERI, we compared the data of the two experiments in a same analysis. The experiment 1 corresponds to the “without environmental support” condition and the Experiment 2 to the “environmental support” condition. Accordingly, a 2 (Age group) × 2 (Experiment: 1 vs 2) repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed on the Generation Effect Reduction Index. The analysis showed a main effect of Age group $F(1, 101) = 4.14; p < 0.05, \eta_p^2 = 0.04$, reduction of generation effect at Trial 2 is higher for younger than for older adults. The main effect of Experiment 1 was not significant $F(1,101) < 1$; but a significant interaction between Age group and Experiment was observed $F(1, 101) = 4.38; p < 0.05, \eta_p^2 = 0.04$. Planned comparison indicated that without an environmental support, generation advantage is reduced in a lesser extend at Trial 2 for older adults than for younger adults $F(1, 101) = 9.95; p < 0.01, \eta_p^2 = 0.09$. In contrast, with an environmental support facilitating read items encoding, age-related differences on generation effect reduction at Trial 2 are not significant $F(1,101) < 1$.

### 3.2.2. Relationships between Generation Effect Reduction Index (GERI) and internal strategy use

Before testing the relationship between GERI and internal strategy use, we examined the age differences in this variable (Table 5). As in Experiment 1, the analysis showed the classic effect of aging on internal strategy use, the younger adults reporting more internal strategy use than the older adults. Bravais-Pearson correlations between GERI and frequency of internal strategy use for each group were calculated. In contrast to Experiment 1, GERI was correlated with internal strategy use only for the younger adults ($r = 0.47, p < 0.05$) but not for the older ones ($r = -0.10, ns$). The correlations obtained for each group in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 between GERI and frequency of internal strategy use were compared and results showed a significant difference between the two correlation coefficients only for the older adults ($z = 1.95; p < 0.05$) but not for the younger ones ($z = 0.81; ns$), suggesting that when the improvement of the read items recall at Trial 2 was driven by a support, the association between GERI and the internal strategy use decreased for the older group. In contrast for the younger adults, the improvement of read items recall is associated to the internal strategy use even if strategy implementation is driven by the task.

Because no age-related difference appeared in the GERI, we did not carry out regression analyses to account for potential mediator of age-related differences in this measure.

## 4. Discussion

As expected, GE decreased at Trial 2 for both young and older
adults. As mentioned before, previous studies have proposed that this reduction would reflect a strategy change based on experience at Trial 1, implemented in order to improve read items recall (Bjork et al., 2007; Bjork & Storm, 2011; Burnett & Bodner, 2014; de Winstanley & Bjork, 2004; Storm et al., 2016). When environmental support was provided, older adults were able to improve the learning of read items in Trial 2 similarly to young adults. They benefited from the support, which enabled them to use effective processing to improve their read items recall and consequently memory performance. This result is consistent with previous studies showing that older adults implement efficient strategies when information about strategies is available, when they are trained to use them, or when they are informed of the importance of taking their metamemory judgments into account (e.g. Dunlosky et al., 2005; Dunlosky & Hertzog, 2000; Froger et al., 2012; Naveh-Benjamin et al., 2007).

As observed when comparing the relationship between internal strategy use and GERI between the two experiments, the support reduced the internal processes required to improve the recall of read items for older but not for younger adults (Rabinowitz et al., 1982; Zacks et al., 2000), and may thus compensate for the age-related self-initiation deficit confirming the environmental support hypothesis predictions (Craik, 1990).

# 5. General discussion

Based on a multi-trial GE protocol, we tested the hypothesis that, due to a decline in both metamemory and internal strategy self-initiation, older adults would not benefit to the same extent as young participants from experiencing the differential efficacy of reading and generation in an initial trial, and would be less likely to improve their memory performance for read items in a subsequent trial. Our results are consistent with this prediction and with previous studies (Bjork et al., 2007; Bjork & Storm, 2011; Burnett & Bodner, 2014; de Winstanley & Bjork, 2004; Storm et al., 2016) using a within-subject design in young adults, which showed the elimination of the GE at Trial 2, following increased recall of read words. The improvement of read items recall in absence of generated items increase in Trial 2 would reflect a strategy change in order to improve read items encoding based on experience in Trial 1. Moreover, this research added several important new findings regarding memory aging. As predicted, we found that generation advantage decrease is observed only in younger adults, indicating that aging affects the capacity to improve read items encoding. Results also showed that this decline is the consequence of a metamemory deficit, and reduced capacity to self-initiate internal strategies. Finally, in line with the environmental support hypothesis (Craik, 1983, 1986, 1990), we showed that this strategy change deficit can be reduced when appropriate environmental support is provided. Concerning the GE reduction in younger adults, the results of this study suggest that explicit knowledge of the differential efficacy of both encoding conditions could prompt strategy change in order to improve read items recall at the second trial. Additionally, we showed that GE reduction in younger adults rely on internal strategy use even when a support drives the read items encoding.

## 5.1. Generation effect and strategy change in aging

In accordance with the literature, we observed the classic aging effect in an episodic memory task (e.g., Balota et al., 2000; Luo & Craik, 2008; McDaniel et al., 2008), and that older adults benefit as much as younger ones from semantic generation at encoding at the first trial (e.g. Johnson et al., 1989; Mitchell et al., 1986; Rabinowitz, 1989; Taconnat & Isingrini, 1996, Experiment 1; Taconnat et al., 2003, Experiment 1; Taconnat & Isingrini, 2004; Whiting, 2003). Generation of semantic associates is a guiding task that encourages semantic processing of information at encoding, thereby improving memory performance (Taconnat & Isingrini, 2004). Taconnat and Isingrini (2004)

showed that the semantic generation advantage on memory is observed even in a divided-attention learning condition, suggesting that cognitive operations involved in semantic generation are not effortful because they are driven by the task. This has been suggested as explaining why older adults benefit in the same way as young adults from the GE.

In this study, we examined whether older adults, like younger adults, would show a decrease of the GE at a second trial. Several studies have proposed that the decrease of GE reflects a change of strategies for encoding read items after having experienced the generation advantage in a previous trial. Actually, we have found that GE decrease is related to an improvement of read items recall between trials, while generated items recall did not change, suggesting that it would not be only the result of a practice effect. In line with previous studies (Bjork et al., 2007; Bjork & Storm, 2011; Burnett & Bodner, 2014; de Winstanley & Bjork, 2004; Storm et al., 2016), these results suggest that experience at Trial 1 led younger adults to regulate their learning by self-initiating effective operations when encoding the read words, they probably implement a more effective strategy to improve the recall of read items, consequently eliminating the GE at Trial 2. Experience at first trial would allow younger participants to learn about the differential efficacy of both encoding processes (reading vs. generation), but also to become aware of the type of test used, leading them to identify the information to be processed in order to perform well in this kind of test in a second trial (e.g. cued-target association processing for a cued-recall test) (Storm et al., 2016). In both cases, a self-initiate strategy change must be implement in order to improve recall. By contrast, for older adults recall of read words did not increase in Trial 2 and the GE continued to be significant, it could be interpreted as a difficulty to change, based on experience, the way read items are processed. This result is in line with other studies showing that regulation of learning is impaired with aging. Like previous studies, our results suggest that older adults failed to initiate effective strategies to encode read items that are implemented spontaneously by younger people (e.g. Dunlosky & Hertzog, 1998; Froger et al., 2012; Sanders et al., 1980; Taconnat et al., 2006, 2007, 2009).

## 5.2. Monitoring processes and generation effect reduction

We found that the age-related difference in GE reduction across trials was related to the awareness of how differential encoding (reading vs generation) might have an impact on later memory performance. Results of the first experiment showed that older adults were less aware of GE than their younger counterparts. This confirms that awareness of GE in the first learning trial increases the possibility of improving read items encoding in a subsequent trial only for younger adults (de Winstanley & Bjork, 2004). However, our second experiment demonstrated that providing older adults with information about the generation advantage, and encouraging them to use semantic processing at encoding, enabled them to improve read items recall, and thus, generation effect was diminished for both groups.

Awareness of GE depends on the capacity to monitor performance and to modify metacognitive knowledge about the differential efficacy of reading and generation. The results of this study suggested that younger adults are able to update the knowledge about the efficacy of the two encoding conditions from their experience. This knowledge seems to lead them to implement changes in the way they processed read items, leading to an improvement of the recall of these items and consequently a GE elimination. However, Burnett and Bodner (2014) showed that explicit knowledge about generation advantage is not always crucial to the decrease of GE at trial 2, individuals can improve read items recall without been aware of the generation advantage. The authors suggested that participants could have an implicit knowledge of the GE that would precede the explicit knowledge of the differential advantage of the two encoding conditions. Additional studies must be carried out in order to understand how explicit or implicit knowledge about efficacy of reading and generation lead to improve the read items
processing at the Trial 2.

Processes implicated in metamemory monitoring would be affected
differentially by aging, several studies have showed that judgement of
learning accuracy (Dunlosky & Hertzog, 2000; Kuhlmann & Touron,
2011), global prediction accuracy (Matvey et al., 2002; Woo et al.,
2008) or feeling of knowing (FOK) accuracy (MacLaverty & Hertzog,
2009; Hertzog et al., 2010; but see for different results Perrotin et al.,
2006; Sacher et al., 2013; Souchay et al., 2000; Souchay et al., 2007;
Thomas et al., 2011) are not affected by aging. However concerning
updating metamemory knowledge, some studies have showed that this
aspect of monitoring declines with aging (Bieman-Copland & Charness,
1994; Brigham & Pressley, 1988; Matvey et al., 2002; but see for dif-
ferent results Dunlosky & Hertzog, 2000). Consistent with the hypoth-
esis of impaired updating metamemory knowledge process in older
adults, our results suggest that older adults did not monitor neither
change their metacognitive knowledge about generation advantage as
well as the younger ones did. Older adults had difficulty to sponta-
neously compare the efficacy of the two encoding processes used at
Trial 1 (reading vs. generation) and to acquire accurate metamemory
knowledge from this experience. Note that this lack of awareness could
have come from an age-related deficit in reality monitoring, i.e. for-
getting at recall how the words had been learnt (i.e. read or generated).
However, this is unlikely, because older adults can discriminate be-
tween internally (generated) and externally (read) recalled items as
well as younger adults can (e.g., Mitchell et al., 1986).

The capacity to acquire and modify metacognitive knowledge about
strategy efficacy during recall can be seen as a dual task, because in-
dividuals must be able to recall the target word at retrieval, and at the
same time remember the related encoding condition (read vs. genera-
tion) to associate it with their performance at test (Bieman-Copland &
Charness, 1994; Dunlosky & Hertzog, 2000). It is thus a processing-
resource-dependent operation, requiring control, attentional and
working memory resources, which decline with age (e.g. Craik, 1983,
1986; Craik & Byrd, 1982). Older adults' difficulty to incorporate the
outcomes of previous performance into memory knowledge could be
the result of a reduction in processing resources. Other studies have
shown that older adults can change their metacognitive knowledge as
well as younger ones when it does not place significant demands on
processing resources (e.g. Dunlosky & Hertzog, 2000; Tullis &
Benjamin, 2012); for instance, when the task directs attention to the
relative efficacy of strategies, or when the change in knowledge de-
pends on intrinsic stimulus characteristics (e.g. word frequency), or
when retention of contextual features is not required. In these cases, the
working memory load is reduced, and updating knowledge is less re-
source-dependent (Tullis & Benjamin, 2012). In our experiment, the
modification of metacognitive knowledge depended on extrinsic
learning conditions. Thus, to change knowledge about the differential
efficacy of strategies, participants had to remember at recall the en-
coding condition associated with each item (reading vs. generation).
This probably overtaxed their working memory. Since resources decline
with age, this need of additional resources may explain why we ob-
served age-related differences in GE awareness.

It is important to note that in Experiment 1, the young adults who
improve read items encoding at Trial 2 were mainly those who were
aware of the generation advantage. This was not the case for the older
adults; we failed to find evidence showing that awareness of the gen-
eration advantage was sufficient to enable older adults to improve read
items encoding. In fact, some older adults were aware of the GE but
none of them reported changing strategy at Trial 2. Their subjective
statements were confirmed by the significant effect of age on the ob-
jectively computed GERI reflecting strategy change, which was lower in
the older adults than in the younger ones. This result could suggest an
age-related decline on metamemory control processes. However, given
that only a few number of older adults were aware of the generation
advantage, impact of awareness in strategy change observed in the
older group must be cautiously interpreted. When participants were

categorized based on their awareness of the generation effect, sample
size was reduced, only 19 younger and 7 older adults were aware
participants. Based on the effect size of the younger group (d = 0.91),
we can estimate that a sample size of 21 for the two groups, aware and
non-aware, would be necessary in order to reach a satisfactory power
level of 0.80 in the older group. Improvement of read items encoding
would depend on metamemory control processes, which reflect the
capacity to be able to change or carry out appropriate strategies as a
function of metamemory knowledge. Future studies must confirm our
results suggesting that despite accurate metamemory knowledge about
strategy efficacy, older adults did not change the way they processed
read items, continuing to use the less effective strategy for learning
them. This could confirm previous findings showing that metamemory
control declines with age (e.g., Dunlosky & Connor, 1997; Froger et al.,
2011; Murphy et al., 1981; Souchay & Isingrini, 2004b).

We hypothesized that providing an external aid to drive strategy
implementation could compensate for the age-related decline of mon-
itoring and control processes. In line with the environmental hypothesis
(Craik, 1983, 1986, 1990), environmental support can help older adults
to adapt and to initiate effective processing in order to improve
memory. The findings of Experiment 2 seem to confirm this hypothesis,
as informing the older adults about the advantage of generation for
learning enabled them to modify their knowledge about strategies, and
to use this information to carry out appropriate encoding strategies in
the second trial. The aim of introducing a support condition was to
highlight the generation advantage and also to explain the mechanisms
underlying this effect. Thus, participants were not only aware of the
generation advantage, but they were also informed about the semantic
operations that they could use to improve memorization. We observed
that this reduced the implication of internal strategies use in the re-
duction of the generation effect, suggesting that the older adults used
their metamemory knowledge effectively to encode read items. In line
with other studies, we observed that age-related differences in mon-
itoring and control metamemory processes decreased when participants
were given information about the efficacy of strategies or about the use
of metamemory judgments (Dunlosky & Connor, 1997; Froger et al.,
2012; Rogers, Hertzog, & Fisk, 2000). However, the results of this study
do not allow us to distinguish the metamemory processes involved in
the age-related deficit in strategy change. The support provided in the
second experience allows to improve both monitoring and control
processes, so, it would be interesting to explore specifically whether age
related decline in strategy change is due to a monitoring failure or a
control deficit or to both of them.

5.3. *Generation effect reduction and internal strategies use*

Older adults' deficit in the self-initiation of strategies is associated
with the progressive decline of internal resources (Bryan, Luszcz, &
Pointer, 1999). Consistent with previous studies, our results show that
older adults reported less frequent use of internal strategies than
younger participants (Bouazzaoui et al., 2010; Dixon & Hultsch, 1983;
Loewen, Shaw, & Craik, 1990). We found a significant correlation be-
tween the reduction of the generation advantage and the frequency of
internal strategy use; participants who reported the greatest use of in-
ternal strategies were also those who shown a higher reduction of
generation advantage at Trial 2. Internal strategy use would be involved
in the implementation of self-initiated processes necessary for improve
read items encoding. By contrast, when environmental support was
provided (Experiment 2), enabling strategies to be driven by an external
aid, measure of internal strategy use was correlated with GERI only for
younger adults but not for older ones. What is interesting to note is that,
in accordance with the hypothesis of the resource dependence of self-
initiated strategies, when support is available for older adults, the in-
volvement of internal strategies is reduced, suggesting that the cogni-
tive operations involved in generation effect reduction become less
dependent of internalization processes. The environmental support may
have enabled older adults to change and adapt read items encoding in the second trial because it compensated for their age-related self-initiation processing deficit. The results suggested that the support would have a significant impact mainly in older adult's performance, it drives their strategy change at Trial 2. Strategy implementation in younger adults would be less dependent of external aids as the support given in this task. As showed in Experiment 1, in the absence of support younger adults are able to self-initiate efficient processes allowing to improve read items recall at the second trial. Even when a support is provided, they could continue to self-initiate efficient processes different to those suggested by our instruction in order to improve read items recall. The support in Experiment 2 suggested to the participants to use semantic association to better memorized the word pairs. However as Burnett and Bodner (2014) showed, others strategies can be used by younger adults in order to improve read items recall at the second trial. In their experience, younger adults reported to use strategies as imagery, repetition or focusing mainly on targets. Our findings would seem to suggest that younger adults continue to self-initiate efficient processes to encode read items, strategy implementation would be less driven by the support than for the older ones. However, given the small sample size of each age group, correlation analyses could have a lower statistical power.

Another significant result that emerged from the data was that age-
related deficits in the improvement of read items encoding through
experience leading to GE elimination was explained mainly by internal
strategy use. In fact, the regression analysis revealed that frequency of
internal strategy use mediated the age-related effect on GE reduction, in
others words, deficits in improvement of read items recall were ac-
counted by the decline of internal processes observed in aging.
According to other studies (e.g., Dunlosky & Hertzog, 1998; Froger
et al., 2012; Sanders et al., 1980; Taconnat et al., 2006; Taconnat et al.,
2007; Taconnat et al., 2009), implementation of efficient strategies is
more difficult for older than younger adults because it requires the
mobilization of internal resources, which decrease with aging (Craik,
1983, 1986; Craik & Byrd, 1982). In this study, improvement of read
items recall involved the capacity to self-initiate internal processes and
to adapt read items encoding according to previous experience. Im-
provement of read items recall could be associated to a strategy change
that involves the implementation of internal self-initiated processes.
Nevertheless, environmental support in the form of information about
an efficient cognitive operation for learning could compensate for the
age-related decline in the capacity to self-initiate strategies.

Finally, some potential limitations of this study must to be con-
sidered. Firstly, despite the fact that several studies (Bjork et al., 2007;
Bjork & Storm, 2011; Burnett & Bodner, 2014; de Winstanley & Bjork,
2004; Storm et al., 2016) have suggested that GE decrease reflect a
strategy change allowing individuals to better encode read items, re-
duction of GE across trials is only an indirect measure of strategy
change. For future research, it would be interesting to include in this
protocol a direct measure of strategy use, in order to explore whether
older adults use the same strategies and at the same extent that the
younger participants. For instance, Burnett and Bodner (2014,
Experiment 1 & 3) asked participants to self-report the strategies that
they have used for each item and whether they have changed of stra-
tegies between the two trials. Most of the participants reported to have
changed of strategies between the trials. They also showed that parti-
cipants used four strategies: making sentences-targets links, elaboration
(mentally imaging or semantic treatment), repetition, and focus on
target items. Secondly, results of the second experiment must be in-
terpreted cautiously, even if previous studies using a small sample
(n ≤ 20) have showed the generation advantage in older adults (Brown
et al., 1993; Froger et al., 2011; McFarland et al., 1985; Mitchell et al.,
1986; Rabinowitz, 1989; Taconnat et al., 2003; Taconnat & Isingrini,
2004), one could consider that given the modest sample of the Ex-
periment 2, the elimination of the generation effect observed in older
adults at the second trial could be due to a lack of power of our

analyses. Thirdly, an alternative explanation for the age-related dif-
ference in the improvement of the read items recall at the second trial
could be a difference between the goals concerning the task for both age
groups. Older and younger adults would approach the task in a different
way, older adults would be more likely to strictly adhere to the in-
structions of the task than the younger adults. Consequently, at the
second trial they do not change their way to process read items, they
could suppose that they must to continue using the same strategy as in
previous trial. It could be important to examine this possibility in future
studies. For example, at the end of the experience participants who do
not report having changed of strategy could be asked to report why they
continue to use the same strategy in the second trial. This manipulation
could contribute to understand the motivational and cognitive factors
implicated in the age-related difficult to change of strategy in the
second trial. The ability to implement adapted encoding and retrieval
processes does not decline with aging but an age-related difference
would be observed in their spontaneous use. Previous studies have
showed that older adults are more likely to self-initiate effective stra-
tegies when incidental memory instructions are given than when an
intentional instruction is used (Kausler, 1991; Perlmutter & Mitchell,
1982). Future studies could focus also in the potential motivational
factors affecting strategy implementation in aging, one could considers
that older adults could be less motivated than younger adults to change
of strategy. Ponds and Jolles (1996) showed that in contrast to younger
adults, older adults consider that having a good performance in a
memory task (Achievement scale of the MIA) is less important, this
factor could have a negative impact in strategy implementation. Maybe
as they are less motivated they do not mobilize all their cognitive re-
sources to accomplish the task. Additionally, even if they know that a
better strategy could be implemented to improve read items recall, they
could have difficulties to identify and select a strategy to process these
items.

5.4. Conclusion

In conclusion, the main new findings of this study are that, in
contrast to young adults, older participants did not change the way they
processed read items at Trial 2, their recall of read items did not im-
prove, and GE remained significant. We showed that the age-related
differences in the reduction of the generation advantage at Trial 2 was
mainly explained by a reduction in self-reported internal strategy use,
which are necessary for the implementation of self-initiated processes.
Therefore, the support condition allowed the older adults to improve
read items recall by decreasing the internal demands of the task, con-
sistent with the environmental support hypothesis, whereby providing
support compensates for the age-related decline in self-initiated pro-
cessing (Craik, 1983, 1986, 1990). We also showed that age-related
deficits in monitoring processes contributed to the reduced ability to
improve read items encoding. Older adults were less able than the
young participants to modify their knowledge about strategies after
experiencing them in the first test. Knowledge about the differential
efficacy of generation over reading acquired in Trial 1 enabled the
young adults to change the way they processed items in the second trial
in order to improve their recall of read items. By contrast, the older
adults were less aware of the generation advantage, and even when
they were, it seems that they did not use this knowledge to self-initiate
effective encoding process in Trial 2.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Donia Akour for assistance in testing and database
construction and Elizabeth Yates for helpful corrections and comments.

Funding sources

This work was supported in part by grants from the French Agence
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