The Hartman and Hasher (1991) garden-path sentence completion task has been
used in several studies to assess the efficiency of the deletion function
of inhibition (e.g., L. Hasher, R. Zacks, & C. P. May, 1999), with results
suggesting that younger adults are efficient at suppressing once relevant b
ut no longer appropriate information, whereas older adults generally are no
t (e.g., M. Hartman & L, Hasher, 1991: L. Hasher, M. B. Quig, & C. P. May,
1997; C. P. May & L. Hasher, 1998). An alternative interpretation of patter
ns of access to relevant and no-longer-relevant sentence endings focuses on
the difficulty of selecting final words for sentence frames and on integra
tion effects in implicit memory (M. Hartman, 1995). This alternative is con
sidered and found wanting on the basis of both new and old empirical data.
On the basis of present data and related findings, it is concluded that the
task does measure inhibitory efficiency.