No inhibitory deficit in older adults' episodic memory.
Selectively retrieving a subset of previously studied material can cause forgetting of the unpracticed material. Such retrieval-induced forgetting is attributed to an inhibitory mechanism recruited to resolve interference among competing items. According to the inhibition-deficit hypothesis, older people experience a specific decline in inhibitory function and thus should show reduced retrieval-induced forgetting. However, the results of the two experiments reported here show the same amount of retrieval-induced forgetting in younger and older adults. These results indicate that retrieval inhibition is intact in older adults' episodic recall. The findings suggest that the common view of a general inhibitory deficit in older adults needs to be updated and that older adults show intact inhibition in some cognitive tasks and deficient inhibition in others.
Aslan
Alp
A
Department of Experimental Psychology, Regensburg University, Regensburg, Germany.
Bäuml
Karl-Heinz
KH
Pastötter
Bernhard
B
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory