EVIDENCE FOR IDENTITY INHIBITION DURING SELECTIVE ATTENTION IN OLD ADULTS

Previous studies of negative priming have shown that, relative to youn g adults, old adults can effectively suppress location information ass ociated with stimuli, but not information about the identity of stimul i. S. L. Connelly and L. Hasher (1993) attributed this dissociation to an age-related decrement in the inhibitory processes that suppress me aning-bearing information. In this study, the authors report both iden tity negative priming and distractor interference in a group of young and old adults. Their results force a reconsideration of an age-relate d decrement in the inhibitory processes underlying the suppression of meaning-bearing information. The results also suggest that whether a r elationship between negative priming and interference is observed may depend on whether the 2 measures index the same level of processing.