Aging and the negative priming effect: A meta-analysis.

This article reports results from a meta-analysis on adult age differences in the negative priming effect (21 studies on identity negative priming and 8 on location negative priming). Both younger and older adults were found to be susceptible to the negative priming effect in identity and location tasks. Effect sizes were homogeneous for both tasks, indicating that the data are adequately described without reference to moderator variables. State trace analysis on identity tasks, in which mean latencies in negative priming conditions were regressed onto mean latencies in baseline conditions, showed (a) that in both age groups the negative priming effect is proportional rather than additive and (b) that the negative priming effect is smaller in older adults as compared with younger adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and the inhibition of spatial location.

Two experiments compared the performance of older and younger adults on a task assessing suppression (or negative priming) for location of distractors. A 3rd experiment compared the 2 age groups on suppression for location and identity of distractors such that location was irrelevant to selection and response. Older and younger adults showed location suppression across all experiments. In Exp 3, identity suppression was found for younger but not older adults. In addition, younger adults revealed an additive effect for suppression of identity and location. Consistent evidence of inhibition of return was not found for either age group. The findings are discussed in terms of the L. Hasher and R. T. Zacks (1988) theory of reduced inhibitory efficiency in the elderly and in terms of neurophysiological evidence that inhibition of identity and location may function separately within the 2 cortical visual systems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging, optimal testing times, and negative priming.

The effects of time-of-day preferences on selective attention were tested in 2 experiments after normative work with 975 younger adults and 143 older adults verified C. P. May, L. Hasher, and E. R. Stoltzfus's (1993) finding that most older adults prefer the morning, whereas younger adults prefer activities later in the day. In Experiment 1, the cognitive effects of testing at preferred or nonpreferred times of day were examined in negative priming and related paradigms because (a) older adults typically have not shown negative priming and (b) previous research has not taken preference and testing times into account. In contrast to those tested at nonpreferred times, both younger and older groups tested at their preferred times showed negative priming. Age or testing optimality also affected other priming tasks. The central results were replicated in Experiment 2, which tested younger and older adults at their preferred times of the middle of the day. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Continued inhibitory capacity throughout adulthood: conceptual negative priming in younger and older adults

Two negative priming experiments in older and younger adults are reported. Participants in Experiment 1, involving both positive and negative priming conditions, showed both types of priming. There were no significant differences between age groups. If anything, older participants showed more negative priming. In Experiment 2, involving only negative priming conditions, similar results were obtained. Our findings rule out possible effects of experimental conditions that episodic retrieval theorists have suggested might account for negative priming in older adults. Although our results may be consistent with an explanation of negative priming in older adults by an expansively specified theory of episodic retrieval, they are at least as consistent with the view that inhibitory processes are intact in older adults. In light of these findings, conflicting empirical results and alternative views of negative priming in older adults are examined.     

Age-related equivalence of identity suppression in the Stroop color-word task.

Previous failures to find reliable identity suppression (identity negative priming) in older adults have led to conclusions that older adults suffer from an impairment in the inhibitory component of selective attention. Here, 2 experiments using the Stroop procedure found identity suppression in older adults that was both reliable and equivalent to that in younger adults. Experiment 1 with repeated target colors produced correlations consistent with an episodic retrieval explanation of identity suppression, Experiment 2 without repeated targets produced correlations inconsistent with the episodic retrieval interpretation. These patterns were found for both younger and older adults. No evidence was found for reduced identity suppression that would be consistent with a general inhibitory impairment in older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences and the identity negative priming effect: An updated meta-analysis.

A recent meta-analysis (P. Verbaeghen & L. De Meersman, 1998a) revealed that older adults show a reliable but significantly reduced negative priming effect compared with young adults. The present study provides an updated quantitative review on the effect of aging on the magnitude of the negative priming effect in identity tasks. This analysis demonstrated that the negative priming effect was not significantly different between young and old adults. This result differs from P. Verhaeghen and L. De Meersman's study. The implications of this finding for inhibitory-based theories of cognitive aging are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A test of the frontal lobe functioning hypothesis of age deficits in production priming.

Older adults have been hypothesized to show reduced priming relative to younger adults on implicit memory tests that require production of a response because these tasks place high demands on attentional processes associated with frontal lobe function, which are often reduced with age (see D. A. Fleischman & J. D. E. Gabrieli, 1998). The current study directly tested this frontal lobe hypothesis of age effects in production priming. Younger adults and older adults who differed in their attentional abilities as measured by a battery of neuropsychological tests were given two production priming tasks, word stem completion and category production, followed by explicit free recall tests. Results showed that explicit memory performance was reduced by age and older adults' frontal functioning. Age and frontal functioning influenced category production priming but not word stem completion priming. Results failed to support the frontal account of age reductions in production priming. Instead, results implicate the influence of other processes often involved in production priming tasks, such as explicit memory strategies and response competition, as critical for understanding age effects in implicit memory performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of familiarity of task and choice on the functional performance of younger and older adults.

An experiment was conducted to compare the functional performance of younger and older adults on familiar and unfamiliar tasks under 2 conditions of perceived control. Specifically, the relation between age and motor and process skills was examined. The familiar tasks were simple cooking tasks, whereas the unfamiliar tasks were contrived, meaningless tasks developed for this study. Younger and older adults did not differ in the ratings of the familiarity of the tasks, but results from 2 Age?×?Task?×?Choice analyses of variance demonstrated a significant age difference for motor and process skills under all conditions. This suggests that older adults demonstrate age-related decline, even with activities that take motivational, experiential, and ecological validity components into account. For the process skills scale, there was also a significant main effect for choice. These results support the concept that perceived control may improve performance, but not differentially for older adults; that is, younger and older adults both demonstrated improved process performance when given their choice of tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

General slowing in semantic priming and word recognition.

Analyses of lexical decision studies revealed that (1) older (O) adults' mean semantic priming effect was 1.44 times that of younger (Y) adults, (2) regression lines describing the relations between O and Y adults' latencies in related (O?=?1.54 Y?–?112) and unrelated conditions (O?=?1.50 Y?–?93) were not significantly different, and (3) that there was a proportional relation between O and Y adults' priming effects (O?=?1.48 Y?–?2). Analyses of word-naming studies yielded similar results. Analyses of delayed pronunciation data (D. A. Balota & J. M. Duchek, 1988) revealed that word recognition was 1.47 times slower in O adults, whereas O adults' output processes were only 1.26 times slower. Overall, analyses of whole latencies and durations of component processes provide converging evidence for a general slowing factor of approximately 1.5 for lexical information processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Further evidence that negative priming in the Stroop color–word task is equivalent in older and younger adults.

In 2 experiments, possible adult age differences in negative priming were explored using several variants of the Stroop color-word task. Negative priming was at least as high in the older adults as in the younger adults in every variant. Negative priming varied as a function of condition, but the age equivalence was unaffected. This result was true even when the possibility of general slowing was taken into account. Across conditions, interference and negative priming were positively correlated. The results do not permit a clear choice between the 2 major theoretical explanations of negative priming, inhibition and memory retrieval; they do show that negative priming can be systematically manipulated within an experimental paradigm. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sequential and coordinative complexity in time–accuracy functions for mental arithmetic.

Time–accuracy functions for tasks involving single-digit mental addition and subtraction were derived in a sample of 18 younger (mean age?=?21.7 years) and 16 older adults (mean age?=?68.8 years). Sequential complexity was manipulated by varying the number of operations (5 vs. 10); coordinative complexity was induced by bracketing. Age differences were apparent in the coordinative conditions, even though no age difference was present in the sequential conditions. This indicates that the age difference under conditions of high coordinative demands could not be attributed solely to a decline in basic speed of processing. The Age?×?Complexity interaction was due to larger onset times and lower asymptotic performance by the older adults in the coordinative conditions but not due to to rate of approach to the asymptote. This implies that coordinative demands do not differentially hurt access from semantic memory in older adults; however, coordinative demands do have disproportionately negative consequences for computation speed and self-monitoring in older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Temperature-related expression of the vacuolar aspartic proteinase (APR1) gene and beta-N-acetylglucosaminidase (HEX1) gene during Candida albicans morphogenesis

An experiment was conducted to compare the functional performance of younger and older adults on familiar and unfamiliar tasks under 2 conditions of perceived control. Specifically, the relation between age and motor and process skills was examined. The familiar tasks were simple cooking tasks, whereas the unfamiliar tasks were contrived, meaningless tasks developed for this study. Younger and older adults did not differ in the ratings of the familiarity of the tasks, but results from 2 Age x Task x Choice analyses of variance demonstrated a significant age difference for motor and process skills under all conditions. This suggests that older adults demonstrate age-related decline, even with activities that take motivational, experiential, and ecological validity components into account. For the process skills scale, there was also a significant main effect for choice. These results support the concept that perceived control may improve performance, but not differentially for older adults; that is, younger and older adults both demonstrated improved process performance when given their choice of tasks.     

Age effects on social cognition: Faces tell a different story.

The authors administered social cognition tasks to younger and older adults to investigate age-related differences in social and emotional processing. Although slower, older adults were as accurate as younger adults in identifying the emotional valence (i.e., positive, negative, or neutral) of facial expressions. However, the age difference in reaction time was largest for negative faces. Older adults were significantly less accurate at identifying specific facial expressions of fear and sadness. No age differences specific to social function were found on tasks of self-reference, identifying emotional words, or theory of mind. Performance on the social tasks in older adults was independent of performance on general cognitive tasks (e.g., working memory) but was related to personality traits and emotional awareness. Older adults also showed more intercorrelations among the social tasks than did the younger adults. These findings suggest that age differences in social cognition are limited to the processing of facial emotion. Nevertheless, with age there appears to be increasing reliance on a common resource to perform social tasks, but one that is not shared with other cognitive domains. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related differences and similarities in dual-task interference.

Differences between younger adults (mean age, 20.7 years) and older adults (mean age, 72.7 years) in dual-task performance were examined in 7 experiments in which the overlap between 2 simple tasks was systematically varied. The results were better fit by a task-switching model in which age was assumed to produce generalized slowing than by a shared-capacity model in which age was assumed to reduce processing resources. The functional architecture of task processing appears the same in younger and older adults. There was no evidence for a specific impairment in the ability of older adults to manage simultaneous tasks. There was evidence for both input and output interference, which may be greater in older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evaluations of older and younger adult speakers: Influence of communication effectiveness and noise.

University students (N?=?96) performed 3 communication tasks presented to them either by young men (mean age?=?26 yrs) or by older men (mean age?=?77 yrs). In counterbalanced order, students heard speakers in 3 message conditions (effective, ineffective, and noise). The messages of older men and the older men themselves were evaluated less positively than were younger men. In line with the hypothesis of age-biased behavioral interpretation, older adults speaking effectively were not accorded the same evaluative benefits over their less-effective guises, especially on competence ratings, as were younger speakers. Furthermore, the noise condition was predictably more detrimental to ratings of the older speakers, who were more vulnerable to generalized negative affect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Constraints on general slowing: a meta-analysis using hierarchical linear models with random coefficients

General slowing (GS) theories are often tested by meta-analysis that model mean latencies of older adults as a function of mean latencies of younger adults. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is inappropriate for this purpose because it fails to account for the nested structure of multitask response time (RT) data. Hierarchical linear models (HLM) are an alternative method for analyzing such data. OLS analysis of data from 21 studies that used iterative cognitive tasks supported GS; however, HLM analysis demonstrated significant variance in slowing across experimental tasks and a process-specific effect by showing less slowing for memory scanning than for visual-search and mental-rotation tasks. The authors conclude that HLM is more suitable than OLS methods for meta-analyses of RT data and for testing GS theories.     

A speed-accuracy analysis of word recognition in young and older adults.

To measure age differences in the rate of semantic priming, studies vary the prime-target interval in lexical decision (LD) tasks. This provides no time limit on the target response. Thus, older adults' greater response times (RTs) could offer them more accumulated priming at the response compared with younger, faster adults. This study used a response deadline procedure in an LD task to equalize processing time across age groups. Although RTs did not significantly differ across age groups, older adults showed larger semantic priming effects than young adults. Semantic priming was also found with response accuracy (d'), but did not differ across age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Orienting tasks as moderators of narrative and expository text recall in adulthood.

Incidental narrative and expository prose memory of 60 older adults (mean age 71.6 yrs) and 60 younger adults (mean age 23.6 yrs) was assessed following orienting tasks that emphasized either relational (sentence scrambling) or individual proposition (letter deletion) information or following a control condition. Orienting tasks were done capably, but older adults took longer and made more errors on the letter-deletion task than did younger adults. Age differences in recall were observed consistently for expository texts, but for narrative texts, age differences in recall were observed only when letters were deleted. If orienting tasks overtax older adults' processing resources or emphasize shallow information, recall gains may be minimal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

No age differences in complex memory search: Older adults search as efficiently as younger adults.

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated age differences in memory search under 4 conditions: forward search, backward search, random search, and fixed irregular search. Both search slopes and serial position curves were investigated. Mixing conditions led to smaller age differences than blocking conditions, suggesting that younger adults have an advantage over older adults when strategies can be applied to memory scanning. All age differences in scanning rates, however, disappeared when age differences in a magnitude-judgment control task were controlled for, showing that age differences in memory scanning tasks are not because of the scanning process per se, but because of attention, sensorimotor speed, and decision processes. In both experiments, the serial position curves of older adults echoed those of younger adults closely, demonstrating that younger and older adults use the same scanning processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and negative priming in a location suppression task: The long and the short of it.

The role of temporal parameters in aging and inhibitory function was examined using negative priming (NP) and repetition priming (RP) in a task involving a series of visually presented prime-probe sets; responses were made on the basis of the location of a target stimulus. Preparatory intervals (PI) preceding prime-probe sets were 3,000 ms or 1,500 ms. The longer PI resulted in less NP in older adults than did the shorter PI. Further analyses suggest that older adults may be less prepared to inhibit the distractor following the longer PI. The longer PI also produced more RP than did the shorter PI for both age groups, indicating a greater emphasis on facilitatory processes in this condition. In addition, evidence was obtained to suggest that an inverse relationship between NP and RP exists for both young and old adults. These data suggest that individuals or task conditions may emphasize either facilitation or inhibition in selection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)