How does memory change across the lifespan? What can eye movements and mental imagery tell us about how older adults encode and retrieve information? And can insights from cognitive research be translated into interventions or tools that help maintain or strengthen memory? In this line of research, we investigate how memory processes differ between younger and older adults and how a better understanding of these processes can help identify strategies to support memory in older adults.
One focus of our research is on visual memory and mental imagery. When asked to recall and visualize previously seen images, we tend to look back to empty locations where the images were presented. This effect has been shown in young adults and children. Using eye-tracking, we investigated whether this robust effect is also present in older adults. Our results show that older adults also look back to previously relevant locations during recall, although their gaze is less precisely directed toward these locations than that of younger adults. As visual memory has been shown to decline with aging, it is relevant to understand whether and how older adults use their eyes when they recall visual information. It has been suggested that looking back to previously visited areas could work as a scaffolding structure for the generation and inspection of mental images.
A second focus is on strategies that may support memory. For example, we have investigated drawing as an encoding strategy and whether its benefits for memory differ between younger and older adults. Of particular interest is associative memory – the ability to remember relationships between different pieces of information – which is especially affected by healthy aging. More broadly, we are interested in how knowledge about memory processes can be translated into approaches that help maintain and strengthen memory in older adults. Current work investigates how different encoding strategies and new technologies can be used to support memory, including the potential of immersive virtual reality for memory training.
