Spontaneous Distractor Reactivation With Age: Evidence for Bound Target-Distractor Representations in Memory

Reduced attentional control with age is associated with the processing and maintenance of task-irrelevant information in memory. Yet the nature of these memory representations remains unclear. We present evidence that, relative to younger adults (n = 48), older adults (n = 48) both (a) store simulta...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological science 2020-10, Vol.31 (10), p.1315-1324
Main Authors: Amer, Tarek, Ngo, K. W. Joan, Weeks, Jennifer C., Hasher, Lynn
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access
Attentional processes
Implicit memory
Older people
Priming
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Summary:Reduced attentional control with age is associated with the processing and maintenance of task-irrelevant information in memory. Yet the nature of these memory representations remains unclear. We present evidence that, relative to younger adults (n = 48), older adults (n = 48) both (a) store simultaneously presented target and irrelevant information as rich, bound memory representations and (b) spontaneously reactivate irrelevant information when presented with previously associated targets. In a three-stage implicit reactivation paradigm, re-presenting a target picture that was previously paired with a distractor word spontaneously reactivated the previously associated word, making it become more accessible than an unreactivated distractor word in a subsequent implicit memory task. The accessibility of reactivated words, indexed by priming, was also greater than the degree of distractor priming shown by older adults in a control condition (n = 48). Thus, reduced attentional control influences the processing and representation of incoming information.
ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
DOI:10.1177/0956797620951125