Related Experiment Videos
Second thoughts versus second looks: an age-related deficit in reflectively refreshing just-activated information
Marcia K Johnson1, John A Reeder, Carol L Raye
1Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8205, USA. marcia.johnson@yale.edu
Psychological Science
|March 15, 2002
Abstract:
Age-related deficits in memory are greater as encoding and retrieval tasks require more reflective (self-generated or executive) processing. One problem in developing more specific models of age-related changes in cognition is that the tasks studied tend to be complex and vary in the combinations of component cognitive processes they recruit. Here we report an age-related deficit in one of the most elementary, but critical, components of reflection: refreshing a just-activated representation. Impairment in such a process potentially has a wide-ranging impact on all higher-order cognition.