Assessing Web interaction with recollection: Age-related and task-related differences Isabelle Etcheverry, Patrice Terrier ⇑ , Jean-Claude Marquié Université de Toulouse & CNRS (CLLE-LTC UMR 5263), MDR, 5 allées A. Machado, F-31058 Toulouse Cedex 9, France article info Article history: Available online xxxx Keywords: Internet Information search Aging Recollection Gist Verbatim abstract The current study examined how young (n = 26; mean = 22.31 years) and older Internet users (n = 24; mean = 64.54 years) performed when they had to select and recollect information displayed in Web pages. Content-oriented and navigation-oriented information-finding tasks were used during the study phase. At test, the method made use of two recognition paradigms designed to assess recollection and the nature of representations in memory: namely, the remember/know procedure and a forced-choice recognition procedure which made it possible to compare the retrieval of detailed (verbatim-based) and semantic (gist-based) representations. The evidence from both procedures suggested that remem- bering was less contextualised in older participants. Furthermore, the idea that content-oriented searches impose greater processing demands than navigation-oriented searches in Web pages was confirmed for both age groups. Interestingly, the older Internet users experienced more difficulties in finding targets in navigation-oriented searches than in content-oriented searches. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Demographic statistics show that the population is aging. In Asia, North America, and Europe, while the percentage of the pop- ulation over 65 varied between 6% and 15% in 2000, it is estimated that the corresponding figures will be between 12% and 24% in 2030 (Holzinger, Ziefle, & Röcker, 2010; Kinsella & Velkoff, 2001). At the same time, the Web is growing in importance as a tool which enables older people to pursue their interests and enjoy equal access to information and services. According to the Pew Re- search Center’s Internet & American Life Project surveys (Jones & Fox, 2009), the number of older people now online is higher than ever before. While nearly 60% of people aged 60–69 were online in 2008, the biggest increase in Internet use can be seen among 70–75-year-olds (26% in 2005; 45% in 2008). Older generations are now also diversifying the activities they perform online. They use the Internet less for socialising and entertainment than teenag- ers and younger adults and more as a tool to help them search for information. The fact that the Internet is now being extensively used by people over the age of 60 represents a potential challenge for Web designers (Czaja & Lee, 2001). Users of this age group differ considerably from standard Internet users. Not only have they come to the Internet later in life than younger users but they are also subject to changes in their physical and cognitive functions due to the effects of aging. One such change is the decline of episodic memory. As people get older, it becomes harder for them to recall specific past events and remember what happened, as well as where and when (e.g. Maylor, 2005; Naveh-Benjamin, Souchay, & Moulin, 2009; Nilsson, 2003). This age-related decline in episodic memory is a potential source of difficulty for older adults when navigating the Web. For example, they might repeatedly follow the same links and visit the same pages in order to perform a single search. If a page has already been visited while searching for a given item of information, visiting it again it will not bring the user closer to completing the search. In contrast, if the page was visited during a previous search, it may be useful to view it again. Thus, to search the Web efficiently, users require a good memory of the context in which a particular action was performed. Mead, Spaulding, Sit, Meyer, and Walker (1997) examined the navigation paths taken by young and older adults in a series of Web tasks. The older adults took longer and were less likely to complete all the tasks. They also returned to pages they had already visited during a search significantly more often than the younger adults. They repeatedly selected identical links despite the fact that these links changed colour after having been followed once. This suggests that the older adults found it more difficult to remember their previous actions and the location of the information they had already viewed. Although their data suggest the occur- rence of episodic memory failures in older Web users, Mead et al. (1997) merely inferred a difficulty in recalling episodic memories. The authors performed no direct measure of how well the 0747-5632/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2011.08.004 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 (0)5 61 50 35 44; fax: +33 (0)5 61 50 35 33. E-mail addresses: isabelle.etcheverry@univ-tlse2.fr (I. Etcheverry), terrier@univ- tlse2.fr (P. Terrier), marquie@univ-tlse2.fr (J.-C. Marquié). Computers in Human Behavior xxx (2011) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Computers in Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh Please cite this article in press as: Etcheverry, I., et al. Assessing Web interaction with recollection: Age-related and task-related differences. Computers in Human Behavior (2011), doi:10.1016/j.chb.2011.08.004