The effect of perceptual cues on aging and the inhibitory deficit hypothesis
Abstract
The inhibitory deficit hypothesis (Hasher & Zacks, 1988; Zacks & Hasher, 1997; Hasher, Zacks, & May, 1999) proposes that a reduction in inhibitory ability causes older adults to perform worse than younger adults on working memory tasks. According to Hasher and colleagues, one exception to this inhibitory deficit is that older adults are not disadvantaged in tasks that use salient perceptual cues, such as color or location, to distinguish target information from distractor information. Experiments 1 and 2 tested this prediction using a working memory task in which relevant items were designated by font color. In Experiment 3, auditory stimuli were used and relevance was determined by the location of the stimuli. In all experiments older adults showed a lower proportion of correct responses and a higher proportion of errors than younger adults even though there were only 4 relevant items per trial. The results suggest that older adults did not use salient perceptual cues as efficiently as younger adults to overcome interference by irrelevant material. These results are in disagreement with the supposition by Hasher and colleagues that perceptual salience can be used by older adults to effectively screen out irrelevant information.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Surprenant, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Gerontology|Developmental psychology|Cognitive therapy
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