Loading…

Aging and associative binding in contingency learning

Cue competition effects are pervasive in young adults' learning, but evidence for these effects in older adults' learning is mixed. For example, although older adults show strong forward blocking, they do not show recovery from overshadowing. We examined whether this could be due to proble...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 2021-09, Vol.28 (5), p.701-716
Main Authors: Mutter, Sharon A., Arnold, Jessica P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Cue competition effects are pervasive in young adults' learning, but evidence for these effects in older adults' learning is mixed. For example, although older adults show strong forward blocking, they do not show recovery from overshadowing. We examined whether this could be due to problems with associative binding using a rapid, streamed trial contingency learning task to minimize long-term memory retrieval demands. In a forward blocking paradigm , target cues gained less predictive value when the competing companion cues had high predictive value and this forward blocking effect was similar for younger and older adults. In a backward blocking paradigm, target cues lost more predictive value when the competing companion cues had high predictive value, but this backward blocking effect was greater for younger than older adults. These findings, together with evidence that within-compound associations for companion and target cues mediate backward, but not forward cue competition effects, suggest that a decline in associative binding may be responsible for the absence of backward cue competition effects in older adults' contingency learning .
ISSN:1382-5585
1744-4128
DOI:10.1080/13825585.2020.1812500