Aging is thought to involve a decline in executive-control capacities, although evidence regarding this claim is not always clear. Thus, although studies exist that suggest impoverished inhibitory memory control in older adults relative to younger adults, experiments with the list-method direct forgetting procedure have mostly failed to show adult-age differences in voluntary forgetting. In the present study we aimed to further study this issue by comparing young-old and young adults’ performance with the selective directed forgetting (SDF) procedure, which we assumed to involve higher demands of executive control than the standard nonselective procedure. Thus, on the basis of previous studies showing that a critical factor in finding adult-age differences in executive-control tasks is the overall challenge posed by the tasks, we predicted less SDF in older adults than in younger adults. Supporting our hypothesis, across three experiments we show evidence of older adults’ impoverished capacity to voluntarily forget episodic memories, although only when the task requires selective forgetting. Ours join other findings to suggest that sensitiveness to detect adult-age differences in cognitive control may strongly depend on the executive-control demands imposed by tasks

Selective voluntary forgetting in young and older adults / Aguirre, Carmen; Gómez-Ariza Carlos, J; . Bajo Ma., Teresa; Andrés, Pilar; Mazzoni, Giuliana. - In: PSYCHOLOGY AND AGING. - ISSN 0882-7974. - (2014).

Selective voluntary forgetting in young and older adults

Mazzoni Giuliana
2014

Abstract

Aging is thought to involve a decline in executive-control capacities, although evidence regarding this claim is not always clear. Thus, although studies exist that suggest impoverished inhibitory memory control in older adults relative to younger adults, experiments with the list-method direct forgetting procedure have mostly failed to show adult-age differences in voluntary forgetting. In the present study we aimed to further study this issue by comparing young-old and young adults’ performance with the selective directed forgetting (SDF) procedure, which we assumed to involve higher demands of executive control than the standard nonselective procedure. Thus, on the basis of previous studies showing that a critical factor in finding adult-age differences in executive-control tasks is the overall challenge posed by the tasks, we predicted less SDF in older adults than in younger adults. Supporting our hypothesis, across three experiments we show evidence of older adults’ impoverished capacity to voluntarily forget episodic memories, although only when the task requires selective forgetting. Ours join other findings to suggest that sensitiveness to detect adult-age differences in cognitive control may strongly depend on the executive-control demands imposed by tasks
2014
Selective forgetting, inhibition, retrieval, aging
01 Pubblicazione su rivista::01a Articolo in rivista
Selective voluntary forgetting in young and older adults / Aguirre, Carmen; Gómez-Ariza Carlos, J; . Bajo Ma., Teresa; Andrés, Pilar; Mazzoni, Giuliana. - In: PSYCHOLOGY AND AGING. - ISSN 0882-7974. - (2014).
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11573/1187770
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