Target selection difficulty, negative priming, and aging.

Journal article

It has been recently suggested that the presence of identity negative priming effects in old adults could occur when there is substantial processing of the distracting information in a selective attention task (J. M. Kieley and A. A. Hartley, 1997). In three experiments, using a letter identification task, it was found that making target selection more difficult increased the magnitude of the negative priming effect to a similar extent in both young and old adults. Moreover, the size of the negative priming effect did not differ between young and elderly participants. These results are discussed with respect to the issue of age-related deficits in the mechanisms underlying negative priming.

Authors: Gamboz, N; Russo, R; Fox, E

• Journal: Psychology and aging
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 542-550
• Publication date: 2000-09-01
• DOI: 10.1037//0882-7974.15.3.542
• EISSN: 1939-1498
• ISSN: 0882-7974
• Language: English
• Keywords: Aging; Reaction Time; Problem Solving; Aged; Severity of Illness Index; Humans; Cognition Disorders; Adult; Age Factors; Middle Aged; Adolescent; Random Allocation