Nadia Gamboz | PubMed Health

PubMed2002

Age differences and the identity negative priming effect: an updated meta-analysis.

A recent meta-analysis (P. Verhaeghen & L. De Meersman, 1998a) revealed that older adults show a reliable but significantly reduced negative priming effect compared with young adults. The present study provides an updated quantitative review on the effect of aging on the magnitude of the negative priming effect in identity tasks. This analysis demonstrated that the negative priming effect was not significantly different between young and old adults. This result differs from P. Verhaeghen and L. De Meersman's study. The implications of this finding for inhibitory-based theories of cognitive aging are discussed.

Adult↗

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Evidence for age-related equivalence in the directed forgetting paradigm.

The directed forgetting paradigm involves, under particular experimental circumstances, inhibitory mechanisms, which operate to the successful forgetting of irrelevant words. The item-by-item cueing method (e.g., Basden & Basden, 1996) was used to investigate the directed forgetting effect in young and old adults. Processing of the experimental words was manipulated between subjects by asking participants to perform either a deep or a shallow orienting task on each word of the study list before the occurrence of the cue (to remember of to forget). Results indicated that the instruction to process deeply both to-be-remembered and to-be-forgotten words led to equivalent directed forgetting effects in young and old adults. These results are discussed with respect to the implications they have for the Inhibitory Deficit theory (e.g., Hasher & Zacks, 1988), which suggests that cognitive aging is mainly characterized by a reduction in the efficiency of inhibitory processes.

Adult↗