OBJECTIVES The sources of age differences in short-term memory for spatial locations were explored in 2 experiments that examined factors related to input, to maintenance, and to output. METHOD In each experiment, 4 dots were presented briefly, followed after a retention interval by a probe dot, which was judged to either match or not match one of the 4 memory-set dots. RESULTS AND DISCUSSI...

Two studies examined age differences in recall and recognition memory for positive, negative, and neutral stimuli. In Study 1, younger, middle-aged, and older adults were shown images on a computer screen and, after a distraction task, were asked first to recall as many as they could and then to identify previously shown images from a set of old and new ones. The relative number of negative ima...

OBJECTIVES Previous research demonstrates that younger and older adults prefer distraction over engagement (reappraisal) when regulating high-intensity negative emotion. Older adults also demonstrate a greater bias for positive over negative information in attention and memory compared with younger adults. In this study, we investigated whether emotion regulation choice preferences may differ a...

We show that children display facial expressions when solving mathematical problems, and that adults can infer from these facial expressions whether a child finds the problem easy or difficult. More specifically, we show an age difference in displaying facial expressions while solving math problems. Eleven-year old children display more facial expressions when solving a difficult problem than 8...

Results from three studies are reported in which adults between 18 and 84 years of age performed various versions of the Digit Symbol Substitution Test. The first study revealed that the age-related declines in digit-symbol performance were largely independent of both the amount of education the participants had received and their self-reported health status, and were characterized by a gradual...

It has been hypothesized that reductions in cognitive resources might result in older adults engaging in less systematic processing than young adults when making everyday judgments. In 2 experiments, the authors tested individuals aged from 24 to 89 years to examine the degree to which task-related information associated with more superficial versus complex processing differentially influenced ...

This study evaluates whether tip of the tongue experiences (TOTs) are caused by a more accessible word which blocks retrieval of the target word, especially for older adults. In a "competitor priming" paradigm, young and older adults produced the name of a famous character (e.g., Eliza Doolittle) in response to a question and subsequently named a picture of a famous actor or actress depicting t...

It is commonly believed that older adults hold more negative attitudes toward computer technology than younger people. This study examined age differences in attitudes toward computers as a function of experience with computers and computer task characteristics. A sample of 384 community-dwelling adults ranging in age from 20 to 75 years performed one of three real-world computer tasks (data en...

Previous studies have indicated that older adults have a special deficit in the encoding and retrieval of associations. The current study assessed this deficit using ecologically valid name-face pairs. In two experiments, younger and older participants learned a series of name-face pairs under intentional and incidental learning instructions, respectively, and were then tested for their recogni...

The current study used concurrent acquisition of motion capture and event-related potential (ERP) data to test the prediction that response reprogramming relies on context-updating processes, and that age differences in conflicting-response performance are related to context-updating deficits in the elderly. Participants performed a motor sequencing task that included prepotent pairs of key pre...