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Abstract:
Abstract: Inhibitory accounts of age-related working memory
deficits have postulated that older adults experience degeneration
of prefrontal cortex involved in control over interfering or
no-longer-relevant stimuli (e.g., West, 1996). This leads to the
direct prediction that older adults will be more impaired with
respect to retroactive interference in working memory than younger
controls. Two experiments tested this prediction using an
adaptation of an A-B, C-D paradigm for use with a recognition
measure in verbal working memory. When participants read aloud an
interfering list of items and later had to reject those items as
no-longer-relevant, retroactive interference was observed in both
accuracy and reaction time measures. This interference occurred
regardless of the content of the interfering list, as no evidence
for specifically semantic interference in verbal working memory was
observed. Older adults demonstrated larger retroactive interference
effects in verbal working memory than did their younger
counterparts, even when performance was measured proportionally to
a baseline condition where no interfering list was presented. An
interpretation involving an age-related loss of inhibitory control
over the contents of verbal working memory is consistent with these
results.
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