Aging and distraction by irrelevant speech: does emotional valence matter?
OBJECTIVE
From prior studies, we know that older adults are rarely more distracted by irrelevant speech than younger adults, which is remarkable in light of the inhibitory deficit view of aging. We tested the hypothesis that older adults are more distracted by emotional irrelevant speech during a visual cognitive task than younger adults.


METHODS
Forty-eight younger (mean age = 21.9 years) and 48 older individuals (mean age = 68.1 years) performed a visual counting task while being exposed to irrelevant speech consisting of random numbers intermixed with neutral, positive, or negative words. Performance in these conditions was compared with that in a silence condition.


RESULTS
Irrelevant speech increased counting time and decreased accuracy similarly for younger and older adults. Furthermore, the emotional conditions did not elicit a stronger effect than the neutral condition. Finally, we found implicit memory for irrelevant speech, but its level was independent of emotional valence and age.


CONCLUSIONS
We conclude that emotional irrelevant speech has no disproportionate impact on cognitive performance in older adults. This can be regarded as a challenge to the inhibitory deficit hypothesis.
Van Gerven
Pascal W M
PW
Department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, PO Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands. p.vangerven@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Murphy
Dana R
DR
D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D013060:Speech; D055815:Young Adult