Age differences in selective memory of goal-relevant stimuli under threat.

ABSTRACT: When faced with threat, people often selectively focus on and remember the most pertinent information while simultaneously ignoring any irrelevant information. Filtering distractors under arousal requires inhibitory mechanisms, which take time to recruit and often decline in older age. Despite the adaptive nature of this ability, relatively little research has examined how both threat and time spent preparing these inhibitory mechanisms affect selective memory for goal-relevant information across the life span. In this study, 32 younger and 31 older adults were asked to encode task-relevant scenes, while ignoring transparent task-irrelevant objects superimposed onto them. Threat levels were increased on some trials by threatening participants with monetary deductions if they later forgot s

SUBMITTER: Durbin KA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6070439 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature