Abstract
Spontaneous strategy use may contribute to age-related changes in visuospatial memory. We aimed to establish which strategies are associated with young and older adults’ working memory and long-term memory performance, using ecologically valid stimuli. Across four experiments, we investigated younger (18–37 years; total N = 192) and older (63–85 years; total N = 192) adults’ strategy use when remembering coloured objects within everyday virtual scenes. Participants attempted to recall object-colour or object-location bindings from working memory. In-task spontaneous strategy use was also comprehensively assessed via theory-driven, repeated Likert scale probes. Participants subsequently completed an incidental or intentional long-term memory task assessing item (objects only) and associative memory (object-colour/object-location associations) for the working memory task stimuli. All experiments revealed age-related deficits in working memory and long-term memory, although item long-term memory exhibited smaller effect sizes than associative long-term memory. Regarding strategies, younger adults used verbal coding to a greater extent than older adults, who generally exhibited a reduced strategy repertoire. Importantly, verbal coding was consistently associated with better working memory performance. Regarding object-colour associations, using semantic strategies was associated with better intentional, but not incidental, long-term memory, showing the importance of task foreknowledge in strategy selection. For object-location binding, verbal coding was positively related to both incidental and intentional long-term memory. Object-colour associations may therefore be more amenable to strategic semantic encoding than locations. The findings highlight that strategy use is associated with age effects in visuospatial memory and have implications for developing strategy-based interventions to improve visuospatial memory.