Aging and Repetition Effects: Separate Specific and Nonspecific Influences.

The research reported in this article focuses on processes that contribute to the repetition effect in 2-alternative forced-choice tasks and on how these processes change with age. An analytical approach is presented that allows researchers to discriminate between 2 components of performance. The results of Experiment 1 show that differences in the relative contributions of these 2 processes can produce differences in repetition effects between younger and older adults. Furthermore, as in the negative priming domain, increasing the contribution of 1 of these 2 components can eliminate this age difference. Together, the results argue against the practice of attributing age differences in repetition effects to deficits in any single cognitive process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)