Choices; our daily routine is based on thousands and thousands of little decisions that shape our day. We choose what clothes to wear, food to eat, even what lane to idle in during the morning rush hour - choice is important. Now, we may believe that the choices we make, take place in real-time, without any other cognitive intervention other than choosing one or the other. This is actually an illusion. Research from Yale University has shown that memory plays a significant role in the choices we make.
"People often need to remember information that has been labeled as important, at the expense of information deemed to be less important" says Dr. Michael Cohen of Northwestern University. His research has found that "older adults show a remarkably preserved ability to selectively remember information deemed valuable" (Cohen). So. how do choice and memory correlate?
The study conducted at Yale University, under the supervision of Adam Bear and Paul Bloom consisted of participants being shown white circles on a screen, one quickly turning red and then returning back to white again. The participant was then told to choose the circle that they thought would turn red next. When the participants were given less time to choose, they were actually more accurate - although they chose the circles mostly at random - than when they were given more than a second to decide. Researchers concluded that "people subconsciously perceived the color red before they predicted it would appear, but they consciously experienced these two things in the opposite order" (Bear and Bloom).
"Dew et al. (2012) subsequently showed that in a memory retrieval task, older adults tend to be less responsive than young adults to a cue that might lead to proactive retrieval-related processing, and instead show stronger, reactive activity in response to the stimulus itself, consistent with the Dual Modes of Control Theory" (Cohen)
Therefore the idea that experience leads to better choices in the future is not without basis. This research proves that older adults rely more on memory retrieval than on proactive processing in response to a cue; instead they react more to the stimulus. It can be theorized that perhaps, older adults make choices based more off memory, and younger adults are more forward thinking, using the situation / cue to dictate their response.
In conclusion, "the conscious experience of choice may be constructed after we act - even when it feels like it is the cause of our behavior" say Bear and Bloom.
References:
Cohen, Michael S., Jesse Rissman, Nanthia A. Suthan, Alan D. Castel, and Barbara J. Knowlton. "Effects of Aging on Value-directed Modulation of Semantic Network Activity during Verbal Learning." Neuroimage 125 (2016): 1046-062. Web.
"Choice May Sometimes Be A Cognitive Illusion." Association for Psychological Science RSS. Web. 02 May 2016.
Image: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/october/images/14437-choices_news.jpg
