A Reassessment of Negative Priming Within the Inhibition Framework of Cognitive Aging: There Is More in It Than Previously Believed

Abstract

Three negative-priming studies were carried out to examine whether this paradigm allows a separation of the effects of aging on access, deletion, and restraint control of inhibition. In each study 24 younger (18 to 35 years old) and 24 older (57 to 82 years old) adults were asked to identify pictures. The results reveal difficulties among older adults in preventing the access of distracting perceptual input into responses; however, the ability to restrain inappropriate answers and the ability to delete once-relevant information are not affected by age.

The research presented in this article was funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG, HA 1452=5-1). The authors would like to thank Christina Papke, Katrin Pietz, and Isabella Rzycka for their help in collecting the data.

Notes

Note. Standard deviation in parenthesese. CO = control; NP = negative priming; ST = single target.

Note. Standard deviation in parentheses. CO = control; NP = negative priming; TD = target to distractor and reverse; ST = single target.

Note. Standard deviation in parentheses. CO = control; NP = negative priming; TD = target to distractor and reverse; ST = single target.

^a Prime response – probe response.