By: Danielle Sun (Author), Remy Lakritz (Author), & Emma Kandel (Mentor)
“My memory isn’t what it used to be,” is something you’ve probably heard countless people over age 50 complain about. In fact, The National Institute of Health cites that over 60%-70% of Americans report being concerned about their memory or believing that their memory will worsen as they age. While it is possible that the ability to remember things like where you parked your car at the mall, or how well you can recite a friend’s phone number, can diminish as you get older, it is important to recognize that our memory processes become increasingly refined with age, developing selective and efficient ways of encoding, organizing, and retrieving relevant information. As we age, our memory becomes more selective and value-directed, focusing on information that matters most. For instance, an older adult might clearly remember where they placed their medication, but forget where they left a receipt because one piece of information is far more important than the other. The aging brain learns to categorize relevant pieces of information as “high priority” and therefore allocate more attention to it. But, before understanding how aging can change memory, we must first understand that the human memory system was never designed to remember everything equally, but rather it excels at selectively prioritizing information that is most important for achieving our goals and navigating daily life.
Selective Memory
Memory does not perform like a video camera that records every moment and detail perfectly. It acts more like a spotlight, illuminating and highlighting pieces of information based on what our brains have decided is important and relevant to the situation at hand. Our brains are exposed to an overwhelming amount of information every day, and due to our limited cognitive resources, we are not able to encode everything equally. Thus, memory relies on selective attention to determine what deserves the most focus. For example, it is critical to remember the topics most likely to appear on an important exam for class, while simultaneously forgetting the smaller details from class, such as what your friend was wearing to lecture last week. Our brains are constantly deciding what information is useful enough to keep and what can be discarded and ignored. The ability to differentiate between relevant and irrelevant information becomes even more pronounced as we age.
Research conducted by Schwartz et al. (2023) found that both younger and older adults remember high-value information better when they understand its importance beforehand, suggesting that prioritization of memory begins before information is even processed. In this value task, participants were provided with a numerical value for each item they studied, either before they studied the list (pre-encoding), after they studied it (post-encoding), or not at all (no value control instructions). Results showed that older adults were more selective in the pre-encoding condition relative to the other conditions, but younger adults were not selective in any condition, thereby demonstrating the importance of selective memory with aging. Similarly, Miller and Castel (2025) found that motivation and personal goals influence memory selectivity, particularly in older adults. Moreover, despite having lower memory self-efficacy (belief in one’s own capability to successfully remember information or perform memory tasks) than younger adults, older adults demonstrated greater selectivity for high-value information, suggesting that having awareness of cognitive limitations may promote more efficient allocation of memory resources. Motivation and personal goals strongly influence what people choose to remember. Rather than storing information equally, the brain actively prioritizes material deemed as valuable/goal relevant and allocates more cognitive resources to encoding and remembering that information. But, if memory naturally favors important information, how does the brain decide what is valuable and what is not?
Value Directed Remembering
The process of prioritizing important information is known as value-directed remembering. In many ways, the brain acts much like an inbox filter, tagging certain information to be “high priority” while allowing “junk mail” to be hidden in the background, ready to be deleted. For example, imagine an older adult remembering when and how to take their medication, but forgetting what they had for dinner last night. Rather than trying to remember everything, the brain strategically prioritizes information that is most closely tied to our current goals, needs, and well-being.
Research on the topic suggests that this selectivity is not always random, and can actually be highly strategic. Hennessee et al. (2024) found that older adults are just as capable as younger adults of selectively encoding high-value, goal-directed information, suggesting that goal-directed memory processes remain largely intact with age. Older adults maintained a strong ability to selectively encode information they deemed valuable, suggesting that memory in later adulthood remains highly goal-directed and strategically focused on information that is most relevant to current priorities. Older adults intentionally align their memory strategies with their current goals and prioritized the information they judged to be the most valuable. Furthermore, while younger and older adults may exhibit comparable goal-directed encoding processes, older adults do show reduced success in implementing intentional forgetting when instructed to disregard previously presented information
Moreover, Murphy et al. (2024) found that older adults were more likely to remember meaningful or practically useful associations, highlighting how memory can become increasingly more focused on relevancy as we age. Although it may be true that older adults remember less details overall than younger adults do, they often become better at remembering what matters most. Value-directed memory makes remembering more efficient, but it also raises the important question of what happens to the information our brain decides to be less important?
Metacognitive Shifts in Aging
If memory is selective, the next question becomes: how does aging change what our brains choose to remember? When people think about memory and aging, they often assume that memory simply declines over time. Many people picture older adults forgetting names, misplacing objects, or struggling to keep up with new technology. While aging can make certain types of memory more difficult, this view overlooks an important reality: aging does not weaken memory, it just changes the way memory operates and adapts.
One reason why this shift occurs is that older adults often become increasingly aware of age-related changes in their memory and cognitive abilities. Through everyday experiences, they gain insight into which situations are more likely to challenge their memory and which strategies help them remember information successfully. This metacognitive awareness can lead older adults to adapt their learning and memory behaviors and allocate their limited cognitive resources more selectively towards information that is most relevant, meaningful, or useful for achieving their goals. As a result, memory performance in later adulthood reflects strategic adaptations that prioritize the retention of important information while minimizing effort devoted to less valuable material. In other words, rather than trying to remember every piece of information that comes their way, older adults become more strategic about where their attention should be directed.
Research by Miller and Castel (2025) suggests that older adults recognize that their memory capacity is limited. Results from this study showed that older adults are generally more selective and more motivated to perform well on value-directed remembering tasks compared to younger adults, but they are also less confident in their memory abilities and tried to remember fewer words on each list. Older adults compensate for their lack of confidence in their own memory ability by focusing their attention on information they consider most important. This strategy allows them to remember high-value information just as well as, and sometimes even better than, younger adults.
Imagine receiving a long list of instructions from your doctor. While younger adults might try to remember every detail on the list, an older adult will likely focus primarily on the information with the greatest consequences for forgetting. Older adults will try to prioritize information that has more consequences for forgetting, like medication schedules, symptoms to watch out for, and follow-up appointments. In this way, aging shifts memory from maximizing the amount of information remembered to maximizing the usefulness of what is remembered.
Aging isn’t a simple decline in memory, it reflects a transition from quantity-focused memory to efficiency-focused memory. Older adults become increasingly skilled at identifying and retaining information that matters the most for achieving their goals.
Forgetting More, Remembering Better
So, the next time you hear someone say, “My memory isn’t what it used to be,” they are correct, but not in the way you think. While aging can make it harder for people to remember every detail, memory was never meant to store every single piece of information long-term. Our brains are constantly making decisions about what pieces of information are important to keep, and which are less important to store. As we age, this process becomes increasingly selective, strategic, and goal-oriented rather than attempting to treat all information as equally important. Rather than aging being a simple decline, aging reflects a shift in priorities. Older adults become better at focusing on information that is more useful, meaningful, and necessary for everyday life. Memory does change with age, but it does not become weaker, it becomes smarter. By understanding how memory changes across the lifespan, we can move beyond the misconception that aging inevitably leads to memory failure, and instead appreciate the remarkable ways our brains adapt to help us remember what matters most.
About the Authors
Author: Danielle Sun is a rising third-year undergraduate student at UCLA majoring in Psychology and minoring in Neuroscience. She is interested in understanding human behavior and hopes to pursue a career in psychological research. Outside of academics, she enjoys spending time with friends, playing volleyball, and attending concerts.
Author: Remy Lakritz is a rising third-year Psychobiology student and pre-med undergraduate at UCLA. She is passionate about understanding the brain and human behavior and hopes to pursue a career in medicine. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with friends and family, going to the beach, and baking.
References
Hennessee, J. P., Schorn, J. M., Walsh, C., Castel, A. D., & Knowlton, B. K. (2024). Goal-directed remembering in older adults. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 31, 891-913.
Miller, A. L., & Castel, A. D. (2025). Memory selectivity in younger and older adults: The role of conative factors in value-directed remembering. Psychology and Aging, 40, 371-390.
Murphy, D. H., Hoover, K. M., & Castel, A. D. (2024). Age-differences in selective associative memory: Implications for responsible remembering. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 31, 682-704.
Schwartz, S. T., Siegel, A. L. M., Eich, T. S., & Castel, A. D. (2023). Value-directed memory selectivity relies on goal-directed knowledge of value structure prior to encoding in young and older adults. Psychology and Aging, 38, 30-48.