When Distraction Holds Relevance: A Prospective Memory Benefit for Older Adults

Joana S. Lourenço and Elizabeth A. Maylor
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Joana S. Lourenço: Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
Elizabeth A. Maylor: Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK

IJERPH, 2015, vol. 12, issue 6, 1-19

Abstract: Evidence is accumulating to show that age-related increases in susceptibility to distracting information can benefit older more than young adults in several cognitive tasks. Here we focus on prospective memory ( i.e. , remembering to carry out future intentions) and examine the effect of presenting distracting information that is intention-related as a function of age. Young and older adults performed an ongoing 1-back working memory task to a rapid stream of pictures superimposed with to-be-ignored letter strings. Participants were additionally instructed to respond to target pictures (namely, animals) and, for half of the participants, some strings prior to the targets were intention-related words ( i.e. , animals). Results showed that presenting intention-related distracting information during the ongoing task was particularly advantageous for target detection in older compared to young adults. Moreover, a prospective memory benefit was observed even for older adults who showed no explicit memory for the target distracter words. We speculate that intention-related distracter information enhanced the accessibility of the prospective memory task and suggest that when distracting information holds relevance to intentions it can serve a compensatory role in prospective remembering in older adults.

Keywords: prospective memory; aging; distraction; lures; inhibition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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