Age-related changes in working memory and the ability to ignore distraction.
A weakened ability to effectively resist distraction is a potential basis for reduced working memory capacity (WMC) associated with healthy aging. Exploiting data from 29,631 users of a smartphone game, we show that, as age increases, working memory (WM) performance is compromised more by distractors presented during WM maintenance than distractors presented during encoding. However, with increasing age, the ability to exclude distraction at encoding is a better predictor of WMC in the absence of distraction. A significantly greater contribution of distractor filtering at encoding represents a potential compensation for reduced WMC in older age.
School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, United Kingdom; F.McNab@bham.ac.uk.
Fiona
F
McNab
Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, and.
Peter
P
Zeidman
Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, and Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, University College London, London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom; and.
Robb B
RB
Rutledge
Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, and.
Peter
P
Smittenaar
The Brain and Cognition Laboratory, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3UD, United Kingdom.
Harriet R
HR
Brown
Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, and.
Rick A
RA
Adams
Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, and Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, University College London, London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom; and.
Raymond J
RJ
Dolan
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D018910:Video Games
aging; attention; distraction; working memory