Numerous studies have reported that the repeated presentation of a stimulus leads to an increase in positive affect towards the stimulus itself (the so-called mere exposure effect). Here, we evaluate whether changes in liking due to repetition may have a differential impact on subsequent memories in younger and older adults. In two experiments, younger and older adults were asked to rate a series of nonwords (Experiment 1) or unfamiliar neutral faces (Experiment 2) in terms of how much they like them and then presented with a surprise yes–no recognition memory task. At study, items were repeated either consecutively (massed presentation) or with a lag of 6 intervening items (spaced presentation). In both experiments, participants rated spaced repeated items more positively than massed items, i.e. they liked them most. Moreover, older adults remembered spaced stimuli that they liked most better than younger adults. The findings are discussed in accordance with the mechanisms underlying positivity effects in memory and the effect of repetition on memory encoding.

中文翻译：

---

当两次比一次更好：对重复项的喜好会影响年轻人和老年人的记忆力

大量研究报告说，重复出现刺激会导致对刺激本身的积极影响增加（所谓的单纯暴露效应）。在这里，我们评估由于重复而引起的喜好变化是否会对年轻人和老年人的后续记忆产生不同的影响。在两个实验中，要求年轻人和老年人对他们不喜欢的单词（实验1）或不熟悉的中性面孔（实验2）的等级进行评分，然后给出令人惊讶的“是-不识别”记忆任务。在研究中，项目被连续重复（按顺序排列）或有6个中间项目滞后（按间隔排列）重复。在两个实验中，参与者对间隔重复的项目的评价都比集中的项目更积极，即他们最喜欢它们。此外，老年人想起了比年轻人更喜欢的间隔刺激。将根据发现记忆中的正性效应和重复效应对记忆编码的潜在机制对这些发现进行讨论。