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Age and Inhibition: The Retrieval of Situation Models

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Indiana.
² Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing.
³ Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Canada.

Please address all correspondence regarding this paper to: G. A. Radvansky, Department of Psychology, 218-C Haggar Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556. E-mail: Gabriel.A.Radvansky.1{at}nd.edu

We present a test of whether age-related differences in the management of interference during memory retrieval can be explained, at least in part, by decreased inhibitory mechanisms in older adults. We conducted this test by measuring the ease of retrieval of situation model representations that were sources of interference on the preceding trial but that contained the target information for the current trial. Prior research has shown that situation model retrieval under these conditions exhibits inhibition relative to an unrelated control. This effect was replicated in the current study for younger but not older adults; at the same time, the older adults showed greater overall retrieval interference than the younger adults. This pattern is consistent with the idea that there are declines in inhibitory processing in older adults, and that this applies to memory retrieval.