Associative interference in older and younger adults.

Abstract

Healthy older adults are more challenged by associative interference than younger adults, but prior results could have been due to differences in list discrimination ability. We used a procedure that assessed interference without requiring knowledge of list membership to test the hypothesis that older adults (60 -74 years old) would show more pronounced effects of associative interference in AB/AC learning. Despite our use of a self-paced, rather than timed, study procedure, older adults performed at lower levels of accuracy than younger adults, replicating the well established associative deficit in aging (Naveh-Benjamin & Mayr, 2018). Older participants also displayed more proactive interference on average. Older participants' memory for AB and AC showed statistical independence, resembling earlier data from younger participants with a timed study procedure (Burton, Lek, & Caplan, 2017). However, younger participants, with the current self-paced procedure, produced a facilitating relationship between memory for AB and AC. Thus, younger participants not only resolved, but reversed associative interference. List discrimination could not explain these age differences. Taken together, these results extend the associative deficit in aging, finding increased susceptibility to associative proactive interference and less resolution of associative interference in older than younger participants, even when given the opportunity to compensate during self-paced study.

The influence of long-term memory on working memory: Age-differences in proactive facilitation and interference

“…The age-difference in proactive interference found here is in line with findings in the wider paired associates literature using the AB/AC paradigm (Burton et al, 2019;Wahlheim, 2014). One possible interpretation is that, whatever gating or suppression mechanism protects younger adults from interference (see Oberauer et al, 2017 for discussion), is impaired in old age and allows information from long-term memory to produce associative competition with the contents of working memory.…”

“…In particular, a lack of interference in standard AB/AC paradigms is not uncommon (Burton et al, 2019;see Postman & Underwood, 1973 for a review) and facilitation for AC pairs has also been reported under particular circumstances (Barnes & Underwood, 1959;Burton, Lek, & Caplan, 2017;. In fact, Wahlheim and Jacoby (2013) have shown that performance for AC pairs reflects a mixture of facilitation and interference (see also Jacoby, Wahlheim, & Yonelinas, 2013).…”

“…The are numerous reasons to expect that older adults will exhibit proactive interference from long-term to working memory, even if younger adults do not. In studies using the AB/AC paired associates paradigm, older participants show greater levels of interference for AC pairs relative to younger participants (e.g., Burton, Lek, Dixon, & Caplan, 2019;Ebert & Anderson, 2009;Wahlheim, 2014;Winocur & Moscovitch, 1983).…”

How Proactive Interference during New Associative Learning Impacts General and Specific Memory in Young and Old

“…Collectively, these results suggest that older adults have somewhat greater difficulty remembering specific associations between objects and paired faces or scenes but are not disproportionately susceptible to proactive interference. This is in line with previous studies (Dulas & Duarte, 2016;Guez & Naveh-Benjamin, 2016) but stands in contrast to others that have found older adults are disproportionately susceptible to proactive interference in associative memory (Burton et al, 2019;Ebert & Anderson, 2009;Jacoby et al, 2005). These mixed results could be attributed to few different possibilities.…”

“…Despite the abundance of studies investigating proactive interference in episodic and working memory, older adults' susceptibility to proactive interference in associative memory has not been thoroughly investigated. Of the research that has been conducted, results are somewhat mixed, with some finding no age differences (Dulas & Duarte, 2016;Guez & Naveh-Benjamin, 2016), whereas others showing greater susceptibility to proactive interference in older adults than young adults (Burton, Lek, Dixon, & Caplan, 2019;Ebert & Anderson, 2009;Jacoby, Bishara, Hessels, & Toth, 2005).…”