The cognitive interview enhances long-term free recall of older adults

The Cognitive Interview, a retrieval-based mnemonic technique, has received only limited attention in its application with older adults, and based on previous findings, its benefit to older adults is unclear. The authors found that the Cognitive Interview effectively increased older adults' recall relative to standard recall instructions at a 3-week delay. These findings demonstrate the benefit of a standardized (rather than the prototypically interactive) Cognitive Interview as applied to perceptually impoverished, text-based stimuli. Both theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.