The Importance of Selectivity in Memory: The Influence of Value on Monitoring, Learning, and Cognitive Aging

Remembering information based on its importance or value can help facilitate a person's quality of life by having them selectively prioritize specific information at the cost of being less likely to remember other, less important, information. My dissertation examines the cognitive mechanisms that are involved with this "value-directed remembering" (VDR), as well as how effectively learning information based on its value or importance can be applied to using memory practically in everyday life. Specifically, I tested whether value influences category learning (Chapter 2; Experiments 1-3) and the impact of value on remembering medication side effects (Chapter 3; Experiments 4-6). Generally speaking, the results from the present research suggest that VDR can occur in these paradigms under certain conditions, and that value influences memory performance in both younger and older adults. The findings show that that goal-directed learning occurs in the presence of high value information and that the selective encoding and/or rehearsal of important information during learning is a cognitively active and effortful process. This research illustrates how the importance or value we place on information can help us prioritize our learning and, in turn, facilitate our later retrieval for that information in both theoretically driven and practical memory tasks. The implications of this research range from assisting students to improve the quality of their learning and study habits, to helping doctors identify and classify tumors and broken bones, to improving overall quality of life in older adults