Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2006 Dec;21(4):826-30.
doi: 10.1037/0882-7974.21.4.826.

Attentional disregulation: a benefit for implicit memory

Gillian Rowe  1 , Steven Valderrama, Lynn Hasher, Agatha Lenartowicz
Affiliations

Attentional disregulation: a benefit for implicit memory

Gillian Rowe et al. Psychol Aging. 2006 Dec.

Abstract

The authors investigated the effect of age and time of testing on the ability to control attention and addressed the possibility that older adults' susceptibility to distraction may sometimes facilitate performance on a later cognitive task. Using a modification of a G. Rees, C. Russell, C. D. Frith, and J. Driver (1999) procedure, the authors asked the participants to make same or different judgments on line drawings superimposed with task-irrelevant letter strings. Memory for the distractors was subsequently tested with an implicit memory task. Both older and young adults demonstrated greater memory for distractors at nonoptimal times of day than at optimal times of day; however, older adults showed considerably better memory for the distractors than did young adults.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Anderson MC, Bjork RA. Mechanisms of inhibition in long-term memory A new taxonomy. In: Dagenbach D, Carr TH, editors. Inhibitory processes in attention, memory, and language. Academic Press; San Diego, CA: 1994. pp. 265–325.
    1. Carlson M, Hasher L, Zacks RT, Connelly SL. Aging, distraction, and the benefits of predictable location. Psychology and Aging. 1995;10:427–436. - PubMed
    1. Cassavaugh N, Kramer AF, Peterson MS. Aging and the strategic control of the fixation offset effect. Psychology and Aging. 2004;19:357–361. - PubMed
    1. Cermakian N, Boivin DB. A molecular perspective of human circadian rhythm disorders. Brain Research Reviews. 2003;42:204–220. - PubMed
    1. Cohn NB, Dustman RE, Bradford DC. Age-related decrements in Stroop Color Test performance. Journal of Clinical Psychology. 1984;40:1244–1250. - PubMed

Publication types