title: Selective voluntary forgetting in young and older adults.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology and Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center, University of Granada.
authors.forename: Carmen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Aguirre
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Jaen.
authors.forename: Carlos J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Gómez-Ariza
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology and Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center, University of Granada.
authors.forename: Ma Teresa
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Bajo
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology.
authors.forename: Pilar
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Andrés
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Hull.
authors.forename: Giuliana
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Mazzoni
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D008875:Middle Aged; D055815:Young Adult