Are There Uniform Age-Related Changes Across Tasks Involving Inhibitory Control Through Access, Deletion, and Restraint Functions? A Preliminary Investigation

Abstract

According to Hasher, Zacks, and May (Attention and performance XVII. Cognitive regulation of performance: Interaction of theory and application, pp. 653–675, MIT Press, 1999), a general age-related decline of inhibitory control affects the contents of working memory through three kinds of functions: limiting access to irrelevant information, deleting information that is no longer relevant, and restraining the production of dominant responses. Supportive evidence has been found in a wide variety of experimental tasks. In the present study, age-related changes were examined in the same group of 34 older (aged 60 to 82) and 30 younger (aged 19 to 30) adults performing the same set of tasks involving the access, deletion, or restraint function. The results indicate that age-related declines in inhibition are not uniform but vary depending on task-specific characteristics.

This research was supported by the Actions de Recherches Concertées Nos. 98/03-215 and 05/10-327 of the Communauté Française de Belgique. Pierre Feyereisen is also funded as Research Director by the National Fund for Scientific Research, Belgium. The authors would like to thank Stéphanie Annet, Laurence Demanet, Caroline Swalens, and Sarah Trillet for their collaboration in task elaboration and data collection, and Jacques Grégoire for helpful comments on an earlier version of the text.

Notes

Note. Intrusions A = animal non-final; B = non-animal non-final; C = previously presented word.

^a Difference score: interference condition minus neutral (control) condition.

^b Difference between interference and neutral condition, divided by the neutral condition.

Significance level: ∗p < .05.