In two experiments, I examined whether a prior task success experience improves older adults’ episodic memory by encouraging them to select sophisticated encoding strategies more often. In both experiments, older adults first underwent one of the three manipulations: control (no prior task), prior task success, or prior task failure. They then completed a cued recall task consisting of 35 unrelated concrete word pairs that they were asked to learn and later remember. To assess encoding strategy selection, Experiment 1 adopted a concurrent strategy report method, such that during the encoding phase participants reported on a trial-by-trial basis whether they used rote repetition or mental imagery to encode the word pair. In Experiment 2, participants made retrospective strategy report on all 35 word pairs after completing the cued recall task. In both experiments, prior task experience did not significantly affect participant’s cued recall performance, nor their selection of effective encoding strategies.