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Age-related changes in working memory and the ability to ignore distraction
- Source :
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Publication Year :
- 2015
-
Abstract
- Significance We reveal a novel and highly significant change in how items are held in mind in healthy aging. Using smartphones, data were collected from 29,631 participants, between the ages of 18–69 y. We compare the ability to exclude distractors when items are entered into working memory (WM) (encoding distraction, ED) and when items are held in mind (delay distraction, DD). In older adults, WM in the absence of distraction was more similar to ED exclusion than DD exclusion. A greater reliance on focused attention during encoding may reflect compensation for the more pronounced deterioration we observed in DD exclusion in older age. This can inform other areas of cognition and strategies to ameliorate or manage debilitating age-related cognitive decline.
- Subjects :
- Adult
Aging
Analysis of Variance
Multidisciplinary
Working memory
Poison control
Middle Aged
Biological Sciences
behavioral disciplines and activities
Developmental psychology
Neural activity
Memory, Short-Term
Video Games
Encoding (memory)
Age related
Distraction
Humans
Attention
Healthy aging
Prefrontal cortex
Psychology
Aged
Cognitive psychology
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....ddb16412e34aa35a6bc806bb7feb2166