Age Effects in Adaptive Criterion Learning.

OBJECTIVE Although prior work has examined age-related changes to criterion placement and flexibility, no study tested these constructs through a paradigm that employs adaptive feedback to encourage specific criterion changes. The goal of this study was to assess age differences in how young and older adults adapt and shift criteria in recognition memory decisions based on trial-by-trial feedback. METHOD Young and older adults completed an adaptive criterion learning paradigm. Over 3 study/test cycles, a biased feedback technique at test encouraged more liberal or strict responding by false-positive feedback toward false alarms or misses. RESULTS Older adults were more conservative than young, even when feedback first encouraged a liberal response bias, and older adults adaptively placed criteria in response to biased feedback, much like young adults. After first being encouraged to respond conservatively, older adults shifted criteria less than young when feedback encouraged more lenient responding. DISCUSSION These findings evidence labile adaptive criteria placement and criteria shifting with age. However, age-related tendencies toward conservative response biases may limit the extent to which criteria can be shifted in a lenient direction.