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Abstract
In two experiments, the authors explored the minimum preview duration required by younger and older adults to demonstrate a preview benefit. Both experiments used the same range of five preview durations (371 to 586 ms) to discover the minimum critical preview duration required by younger (Experiment 1) and older (Experiment 2) adults. Experiment 1 revealed that a 414-ms preview was sufficient for younger adults to demonstrate a preview effect, which replicated earlier studies. In Experiment 2, we found that older adults required a 586-ms preview to demonstrate a preview effect. General slowing provided a good account of the data.
The research reported in this article was conducted when the first author was employed by Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, and the second author was employed by Muhlenberg College. Portions of this research were presented at Annual Meeting of The Gerontological Society of America, Washington, DC, November, 2004. Research was partially funded by a grant to the second author by Muhlenberg College.
The authors would like to thank Mieke Donk and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.
Notes
1Deprioritization of the old items is also hypothesized to occur through the inhibition of entire feature maps (Braithwaite & Humphreys, Citation2003; Olivers, Watson, & Humphreys, Citation1999; Watson & Humphreys, Citation1997, Citation1999; Watson & Maylor, Citation2002).
2We also performed a parallel analysis in which the mean RTs were log transformed. The log transformation also eliminated all significant effects involving age, but preserved the other main effects and interactions found in the analysis using the Madden et al. (1992) procedure. The Preview Set Size × Age interaction that approached significance in the other analysis did not in the analysis of the log transformed data. Our preference for the Madden et al. procedure was due to the presence of an additive constant in our artificial aging equation.
3The variant of the Watson and Humphreys (Citation1997) procedure used by Humphreys et al. (Citation2004) can eliminate the timing differences between conditions by presenting irrelevant placeholders for an interval equivalent to the preview interval. This variation of the procedure had not been developed at the time of Kramer and Atchley's (Citation2000) study, and our reinterpretation of their results is not a criticism of their methods, but merely a reconsideration of explanations that they proposed in their paper.
4We thank Matt Peterson for suggesting this idea.
5We thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this possibility.