Observed Strategies on Naturalistic Associative Memory Tasks in Healthy Older Adults and Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment

Background: Understanding the strategies people with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) spontaneously use can inform targeted memory training.

Method: Strategy use was observed for 99 people with aMCI and 100 healthy older adults (HOA) on two memory tasks.

Results: No differences were found between aMCI and HOA in the amount or types of strategies used, but strategy use varied with task. Association was more effective for one task, whereas on the other task, use of written notes or multiple strategies were detrimental to performance and related to poorer performance than active (spaced) retrieval, for aMCI.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest the importance of identifying ineffective habits, in addition to instruction in more beneficial approaches.