Interference effects from divided attention during retrieval in younger and older adults.
The authors examined how retrieval, under divided attention (DA) conditions, is affected by the type of material in a concurrent task, and whether aging produces larger interference effects on memory. Young and old adults studied a list of unrelated words under full attention, and recalled them while performing either an animacy decision task to words or an odd-digit identification task to numbers. The animacy-distracting task interfered substantially with retrieval, and the size of the effect was not amplified in older compared with younger adults. DA using the odd-digit task did not produce as large an interference effect. These findings support the component-process model of memory, and pose problems for resource models of interference from DA at retrieval.
Fernandes
Myra A
MA
Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. mfernandes@rotman-baycrest.on.ca
Moscovitch
Morris
M
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D008875:Middle Aged; D011897:Random Allocation; D011930:Reaction Time