Article Abstract:
The elderly appear less able to ignore irrelevant information and to treat only task-relevant information, a process called selective attention. Earlier research described this activity as one of selecting only relevant information; however, it appears that the process consists of both selecting relevant details and discarding irrelevant ones. The elderly may be less able to discard data because they cannot discriminate among complex stimuli, and they take longer over stimuli that are irrelevant or redundant. Twenty introductory psychology students and 20 elderly adults took part in a reading experiment, once with no distractions, and again with three different types of distractions. The results supported the view that older adults are less efficient at screening out irrelevant data (inhibitory function), but the effect was relatively small. Under two of the conditions the results tended not to support the hypothesis, but this could be explained by a habituation process that takes place when the environment is constant. Active inhibition of distractors is better when the situation is new or the information changes. The terms used in the research, such as active and passive, inhibition and habituation, have not yet been thoroughly clarified. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)
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Article Abstract:
Two experiments were done to compare the item and relational framework of memory between young and older adults. In the first experiment, young and older subjects either rated the pleasantness (item processing) or categorized (relational processing) a list of words. The second experiment was a modification and to replicate the results of the first. Results showed that there were similar patterns in item and relational processing framework between the young and older adults. However, younger adults remembered more than the older subjects.
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Article Abstract:
The effects of age on Type II incidental learning was assessed in a heterogenous population of 1400 in five different age groups using the Name-Face Association Test wherein the name is the intentional recallitem and the city of origin as the incidental recall item. Performance differences were found to be related to age with the differences first noted bythe fifth decade. The effect of age was most significant with intentional learning.
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