Selective attention affects conceptual object priming and recognition: a study with young and older adults

Ballesteros, Soledad; Mayas, Julia · 2015 · Crossref

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01567

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Summary

This study investigates how selective attention during encoding affects conceptual object priming (implicit memory) and old–new recognition (explicit memory) in young and older adults. The research addresses whether attention is required for conceptual implicit memory, a question previously established for perceptual priming and explicit memory, and examines if aging impacts these processes differently. The authors hypothesized that both memory types would require attention at encoding, with older adults potentially showing reduced performance or some priming for unattended stimuli due to known deficits in filtering irrelevant information. The study employed two experiments using a selective attention paradigm within an fMRI setting. Participants included 24 young adults (mean age 30) and 20 cognitively normal older adults (mean age 69). In Experiment 1, participants performed a speeded natural/artificial classification task. During encoding, they attended to a picture outline of a specific color (blue or green) while ignoring another. After a 3-minute distraction task, they performed the same classification task on attended, unattended, and new stimuli. Experiment 2 used a similar encoding phase but required participants to intentionally memorize attended stimuli. The test phase involved an old–new recognition task. Both experiments used picture outlines of familiar objects presented to the left and right of fixation. Results from Experiment 1 demonstrated that conceptual repetition priming required attention at encoding for both age groups. Significant priming, measured by faster response times, was observed only for attended stimuli; unattended and non-studied stimuli showed no facilitation. While older adults were slower overall than young adults, both groups exhibited similar proportional priming effects for attended items. No priming occurred for unattended stimuli in either group. In Experiment 2, explicit memory results showed that recognition performance was significantly better for attended stimuli compared to unattended ones for both groups. Young adults outperformed older adults in recognizing attended items, but neither group showed recognition for unattended stimuli. The age difference in explicit memory was driven by lower hit rates for attended items in older adults, while false alarm rates and performance on unattended items did not differ significantly between groups. The findings confirm that selective attention at encoding is necessary for both conceptual implicit memory (priming) and explicit memory (recognition) in young and cognitively normal older adults. Unlike some previous studies suggesting implicit memory is spared in aging, this study shows that older adults do not exhibit priming for unattended stimuli, indicating that their implicit memory systems are similarly dependent on attentional resources as those of young adults. The results suggest that the lack of priming for unattended items is a robust feature of normal cognitive functioning across the adult lifespan, rather than a deficit specific to aging or pathology. This challenges the notion that implicit memory is entirely independent of attentional constraints in older adults.

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• attention selective divided