Auditory negative priming in younger and older adults

Two experiments are reported in which performance of old and young adults in an auditory negative priming task was compared. Auditory negative priming was not smaller in old than in young adults. This result was independent of whether or not conditions were present that had previously been assumed to favour episodic retrieval, as opposed to inhibitory processes, as a basis of the negative priming phenomenon. The data from the present auditory negative priming experiments are incompatible with the global assumption that the efficiency of inhibitory attentional processes in general diminishes across the adult life span.     

Influence of stimulus repetition on negative priming.

Potential age-related differences in the influence of stimulus repetition on negative and positive priming were investigated in a same-different picture comparison task. Forty-eight young adults and 48 old adults compared a target picture of a familiar object with a standard picture of a familiar object to determine if they were the same or different, while ignoring an overlapping distractor picture presented in a different color. Negative priming effects increased in magnitude with the repetition of the experimental stimuli in a similar fashion for both young and old adults. Conversely, positive priming effects decreased in magnitude with increases in stimulus repetition for both young and old adults. These data suggest that identity-based inhibition develops in a similar fashion from young adulthood to old age. Furthermore, these data add to the growing body of studies that suggest age invariance in the ability to inhibit task-irrelevant information in the environment on the basis of stimulus identity.     

Age differences and the identity negative priming effect: an updated meta-analysis

A recent meta-analysis (P. Verhaeghen & L. De Meersman, 1998a) revealed that older adults show a reliable but significantly reduced negative priming effect compared with young adults. The present study provides an updated quantitative review on the effect of aging on the magnitude of the negative priming effect in identity tasks. This analysis demonstrated that the negative priming effect was not significantly different between young and old adults. This result differs from P. Verhaeghen and L. De Meersman's study. The implications of this finding for inhibitory-based theories of cognitive aging are discussed.     

Autobiographical memory specificity predicts social problem-solving ability in old and young adults

Based on recent research with young, depressed adults, age-related cognitive declines and decreased autobiographical specificity were hypothesized to predict poorer social problem-solving ability in older than in younger healthy adults. Priming autobiographical memory (ABM) was hypothesized to improve social problem-solving performance for older adults. Subsequent to cognitive tests, old and young participants' specific ABMs were tested using a cued recall task, followed by a social problem-solving task. The order of the tasks was counterbalanced to test for a priming effect. Autobiographical specificity was related to cognitive ability and predicted social problem-solving ability for both age groups. However, priming of ABM did not improve social problem-solving ability for older or younger adults. This study provides support for the hypothesis that autobiographical memory serves a directive function across the life-span.     

Age-Related Differences in Memory Illusions: Revelation Effect

Older adults are often more susceptible to various illusions and distortions of memory than young adults. In the experiments reported here, we explored the question of whether normal aging was associated with a larger revelation effect, an illusion of memory in which items that are revealed gradually during a recognition test are more likely to be called old than unrevealed items that are shown in their entirety. Contrary to expectations, older adults were not susceptible to this memory illusion. A revelation effect occurred for young but not older adults, even when older adults were similar to young adults on measures of recognition and repetition priming. When data across experiments were combined, there was evidence for a negative revelation effect in older adults in which revealed items were less likely called old than unrevealed items. These results place boundary conditions on the claim that older adults are more susceptible than young adults to memory illusions, and imply that one or more mechanisms underlying the revelation effect are age sensitive.     

Autobiographical memory specificity predicts social problem-solving ability in old and young adults

Based on recent research with young, depressed adults, age-related cognitive declines and decreased autobiographical specificity were hypothesized to predict poorer social problem-solving ability in older than in younger healthy adults. Priming autobiographical memory (ABM) was hypothesized to improve social problem-solving performance for older adults. Subsequent to cognitive tests, old and young participants' specific ABMs were tested using a cued recall task, followed by a social problem-solving task. The order of the tasks was counterbalanced to test for a priming effect. Autobiographical specificity was related to cognitive ability and predicted social problem-solving ability for both age groups. However, priming of ABM did not improve social problem-solving ability for older or younger adults. This study provides support for the hypothesis that autobiographical memory serves a directive function across the life-span.     

Aging affects word-stem completion and recognition but not category generation

In this study, we investigated the effect of aging on two implicit memory tasks, word-stem completion and category generation, and on explicit recognition. We compared the performance of young and older adults on these implicit memory tasks with those of explicit recognition. We expected better performance of young than older adults in the explicit memory task and similar priming in both implicit memory tasks. The results showed that young adults performed better than older adults in the recognition task. Moreover, both age groups showed priming in the implicit memory tasks, although priming was greater in young adults compared to older adults in the word-stem completion memory task, whereas both age groups showed similar levels of priming in the category generation task. The present results showed dissociations as a function of age not only between the explicit and the implicit tasks but also between the implicit tasks.     

死亡启动影响自我参照记忆的年龄差异

以往研究表明对死亡不可避免性的认识使人类产生死亡焦虑,并且为了降低该焦虑,年轻人倾向于抑制生理自我加工;然而相比年轻人,老年人对死亡的接受程度更高,并且自我抑制能力减弱。因此本研究采用死亡启动范式,探讨了死亡对自我相关记忆的影响以及可能存在的年龄差异。实验一以大学生为被试,结果发现死亡启动后,个体对自我相关信息的再认率显著低于消极启动后;实验二以老年人为被试,结果发现死亡启动后,个体对自我相关信息的再认率与消极启动后无差异。上述结果说明,死亡启动对自我相关记忆的影响存在年龄差异。在大学生中,死亡启动使个体抑制自我相关信息,而在老年人中该抑制效应并不存在。     

Further considerations regarding inhibitory processes, working memory, and cognitive aging

The present study explored the relationship between inhibitory processing (as indexed by identity negative priming in a letter-naming task), working memory, discourse processing, and cognitive aging effects. Consistent with several other recent reports, this study found evidence of intact inhibitory processing, as measured by negative priming, in older adults as well as younger adults. This intact negative priming occurred in conjunction with diminished working memory span and impaired memory in the discourse processing task in the same sample of older adults, further arguing against the likelihood that declines in these areas are caused by impairments in the inhibitory processes measured by negative priming. The implications of these results for theories of cognitive aging and possible reasons for inconsistent findings regarding negative priming effects among the elderly are discussed.     

Older adults encode more,not less: evidence for age-related attentional broadening

Previous work has shown that older adults attend to and implicitly remember more distracting information than young adults; however, it is unknown whether they show a corresponding decrease in implicit memory for targets in the presence of distracters. Using implicit memory tests, we asked whether older adults show a tradeoff in memory between targets and distracters. Here, young and older adults performed a selective attention task in which they were instructed to attend to target pictures and ignore superimposed distracter words. We measured priming for distracter words using fragment completion and for target pictures using naming time. Older adults showed greater priming for distracting words compared to young adults, but equivalent priming for target pictures. These results suggest that older adults have a broader attentional scope than young adults, encompassing both relevant and irrelevant information.     

Attentional modulation of masked repetition and categorical priming in young and older adults

Three experiments examined the effects of temporal attention and aging on masked repetition and categorical priming for numbers and words. Participants' temporal attention was manipulated by varying the stimulus onset asynchrony (i.e., constant or variable SOA). In Experiment 1, participants performed a parity judgment task and a lexical decision task in which categorical priming and repetition priming were, respectively, tested. Experiment 2 used a semantic categorization task testing categorical priming. In Experiment 3, repetition and categorical priming were tested in the same semantic categorization task with the same stimuli. The results of the three experiments showed that masked repetition priming is insensitive to manipulations of temporal attention whereas categorical priming is. Furthermore, no differences were found between young and older adults in repetition priming effects, again contrasting with the categorical priming results for which older adults were more sensitive to attentional manipulations than young adults.     

Age-related changes in implicit emotion processing

The aim of the present study was to compare the performance of older and younger adults on an emotional priming task. Moreover, a nonemotional priming paradigm was used as a control task to disentangle age-related changes due to emotional processing difficulties from modifications due to a decline of executive inhibitory control abilities. Twenty-two young and 22 older healthy participants completed an emotional priming task and a nonemotional priming task. In the older adult group, reaction times in the emotional priming paradigm were not influenced by any of the prime conditions, whereas both groups exhibited similar facilitation effects induced by the congruent prime in the nonemotional task. The selective lack of an emotional priming effect in older adults shown in this preliminary report suggests that aging-induced changes in the ability to recognize emotions implicitly are directly dependent on emotional processing difficulties and not due to a general age-related modification of cognitive processes.     

Priming effects of age stereotypes on memory of older adults in Korea

This study examined priming effects of age stereotypes on memory of Korean older adults. Age stereotypes refer to general beliefs about older adults. Through a priming task, older participants were briefly exposed to positive or negative age stereotypes without awareness. Before and after the priming task, free‐recall tasks were given to participants to measure their memory performance. Changes in performance caused by the priming task were estimated as priming effects of age stereotypes. Participants showed better memory performance after they were exposed to positive stereotypes during the priming task (positive priming effects). In contrast, participants showed worse memory performance after they were exposed to negative age stereotypes during the priming task (negative priming effects). The magnitude of priming effects was similar in positive and negative stereotypes. This result suggests that the implicit activation of age stereotypes can change memory of Korean elderly in both positive and negative ways.     

Effects of category label activation about the elderly

The present research focuses on the study of behavioral effects of non-conscious activation of categories among outgroup (young people) and ingroup members (elderly people). Specifically, non-conscious activation of labels that designate the same group, but with different valence (old vs. elderly), showed an effect on a behavior not directly related to interaction with elderly. The first study with young individuals (N= 62) shows that, after non-conscious activation of a negative label (old), participants displayed longer RTs in the first phase of the task than in the case of positive label (elderly) priming. The second study (N= 40), performed with elderly people, shows a similar result, after non-conscious activation of a negative label (old), elderly people showed longer RTs in the first phase of the task, compared with the group in the non-conscious positive label activation condition. Results concerning the theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Correction to Schlaghecken, Birak, and Maylor (2011)

Reports an error in "Age-related deficits in low-level inhibitory motor control" by Friederike Schlaghecken, Kulbir S. Birak and Elizabeth A. Maylor (Psychology and Aging, 2011[Dec], Vol 26[4], 905-918). The authors discovered that the method proposed for individually extracting priming effects from time course analysis may lead to some spurious effects. In view of possible spurious effects from their application of time course analysis, the authors adopted an alternative strategy that retains their attempt to take an individual approach to identifying NCEs in older participants who may vary more than young participants in terms of the prime-target SOA at which NCEs initially appear. This reanalysis is presented in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2011-10375-001.) Inhibitory control functions in old age were investigated with the "masked prime" paradigm in which participants executed speeded manual choice responses to simple visual targets. These were preceded-either immediately or at some earlier time-by a backward-masked prime. Young adults produced positive compatibility effects (PCEs)-faster and more accurate responses for matching than for nonmatching prime-target pairs-when prime and target immediately followed each other, and the reverse effect (negative compatibility effect, NCE) for targets that followed the prime after a short interval. Older adults produced similar PCEs to young adults, indicating intact low-level motor activation, but failed to produce normal NCEs even with longer delays (Experiment 1), increased opportunity for prime processing (Experiment 2), and prolonged learning (Experiment 3). However, a fine-grained analysis of each individual's time course of masked priming effects revealed NCEs in the majority of older adults, of the same magnitude as those of young adults. These were significantly delayed (even more than expected on the basis of general slowing), indicating a disproportionate impairment of low-level inhibitory motor control in old age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Removing irrelevant information from working memory: a cognitive aging study with the modified Sternberg task

Two experiments with a modified Sternberg recognition task explored the ability of young and old adults to remove irrelevant information from working memory. The task involved 2 memory sets, 1 of which was later cued as irrelevant. The recognition probe was presented at a variable time after the cue. Two indicators of inhibition, the setsize effect of the irrelevant set and the reaction time cost of intrusion probes (i.e., negative probes present in the irrelevant list), were dissociated. Irrelevant setsize effects lasted less than 1 s after the cue and did not differ between old and young adults. Intrusion costs lasted up to 5 s and were disproportionally large for old adults. With the additional requirement to remember both lists until after the probe, young adults' intrusion costs in Experiment 2 were equivalent to those of old adults in Experiment 1, but the setsize effects of the irrelevant set was larger. The results are compatible with a dual-process model of recognition in combination with a working-memory model distinguishing the focus of attention from the activated portion of long-term memory.     

Roles of cognitive load and self-relevance during emotional information searching on decision-making

Older adults have been found to favor positive stimuli over negative stimuli; further, developing a negative preference may be a cognitively demanding process. In the present study, we focused on the joint effects task self-relevance and cognitive load have on older adults' emotional information preferences when performing decision-making. To examine this, we used multi-attribute decision tasks and process-tracing procedure to measure their searching process. The study composed of a 2 (age: young/old) × 2 (cognitive load: load/non-load) × 3 (attribute valence: positive/neutral/negative) × 3 (task self-relevance: high/medium/low) mixed design. Sixty-one young adults and 62 older adults viewed 5 (alternatives) × 5 (attributes) decision matrices that contained positive, negative, and neutral information, with the total views and mean time spent viewing each different valence (positive, negative, and neutral information) set as dependent variables. The results indicated that both young and old adults have no emotional information preference in regard to self-relevance. When under no cognitive load, both positive and negative information were viewed more than neutral information; however, under cognitive load, preference for negative information decreased; this effect size was more robust in older adults. There was also a main effect of self-relevance on total views and mean checking time, with attributes concerning higher self-relevance tasks being more likely to attract attention. Older adults exhibited a consistent hedonic focus, even in highly self-relevant contexts; however, this effect disappeared under cognitive load. Overall, the findings suggest that cognitive resources play an important role in emotional information processing during decision processes.     

Production and identification repetition priming in amnestic mild cognitive impairment

The experiment reported here examined implicit memory function, as measured through repetition priming, in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to examine whether impairments exist in this aspect of memory function. Young adults, healthy older controls, Alzheimer's disease patients, and MCI participants were asked to perform two types of implicit memory tests (word stem completion and threshold identification repetition priming tasks), as well as a recognition test for studied items. As expected, young adults performed better than the other participants on the recognition test and the word stem completion task; there was equivalent priming across groups on the word identification task. While both the older control and MCI participants showed lower levels of priming on the word stem completion task relative to the young adults, the magnitude of priming was equivalent for these two groups, and reliably greater than that of the dementia participants. These results suggest that not all aspects of memory function are impaired in MCI relative to healthy aging.     

The influence of action perception on object recognition: a developmental study

Two experiments explored the existence and the development of relations between action representations and object representations. A priming paradigm was used in which participants viewed an action pantomime followed by the picture of a tool, the tool being either associated or unassociated with the preceding action. Overall, we observed that the perception of an action pantomime can facilitate the recognition of a corresponding tool. Experiment 1 was based on a naming task and was conducted with 9- to 12-year-old children and a group of young adults. While substantial priming effects were obtained for all age groups, they were especially important for the youngest participants. Smaller priming effects were obtained in Experiment 2, using a categorization task and conducted on 5- to 11-year-old children and young adults, but again the results suggest that these action priming effects diminish with increasing age. Implications of these results for the organization and development of conceptual knowledge are discussed.