An Experimental and Computational Analysis of Age Differences in the Recognition of Fragmented Pictures: Inhibitory Connections versus Speed of Processing

Abstract

Young and older adults were tested for the ability to identify degraded pictures presented either in a series of incremental steps with each step increasing the completeness of the visual information (ascending condition) or in one single exposure ( fixed condition ). Significant interference effects , indicated by a superiority of fixed over ascending presentations , appeared at a lower level of performance for the older adults than for the young adults . This finding was consistent with the notion of an inhibition deficit operating in normal aging . A computer simulation , based on simple connectionist architecture , demonstrated that an age related inhibition deficit in the identification of fragmented pictures can be produced by slowed processing rates .