Aging and interference in story recall.
BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: According to inhibitory deficit theory, older adults should be more impaired by visual distractors than younger adults when reading texts. Studies using a multiple-choice recognition test to examine age differences in the impairment of text comprehension due to distractor words yielded inconsistent results.


METHODS
In the present study, younger participants and older participants were required to read short texts comprising unrelated, related, or no distractor words. Visual acuity was equated between groups. Text recall was assessed using a gist-based propositional scoring procedure.


RESULTS
There were pronounced age differences in reading with distraction. Older adults were slowed down more than younger adults by the presence of distractor words when reading. Furthermore, older adults' story recall was clearly impaired by the presence of distractor material, whereas younger adults' recall performance was not. In addition, older adults were more likely to make intrusion errors.


CONCLUSIONS
Consistent with inhibitory deficit theory, the findings suggest that older adults were less able than younger adults to establish a correct mental representation of the target text when distractors were present. Furthermore, older adults were more likely than younger adults to build up incorrect memory representations that comprise distractor concepts. Thus, there are pronounced age differences in the impairment of text comprehension by distracting information.
Department of Experimental Psychology, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Iris
I
Mund
Raoul
R
Bell
Axel
A
Buchner
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D032882:Comprehension; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D011932:Reading; D055815:Young Adult