Older adults are impaired by distractors presented during working memory encoding

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Human Aging Research

Background:

• Working memory (WM) performance declines with age, often linked to increased susceptibility to environmental distractors.
• Effective WM relies on resisting distractors during encoding or maintenance, but research on older adults' (OA) distractor suppression abilities is mixed.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether older adults' working memory deficits are primarily driven by distractors encountered during encoding versus maintenance.
• To examine the impact of distractor characteristics (familiarity, salience) on WM performance in older adults.

Main Methods:

• Three behavioral experiments were conducted with older adults.
• Participants performed WM tasks with distractors presented either during the encoding or maintenance phase.
• Distractor familiarity and salience were manipulated.

Main Results:

• Older adults showed significantly greater vulnerability to distractors presented during the encoding phase compared to the maintenance phase.
• Distractor familiarity had minimal effect on performance.
• Low-salience distractors during encoding caused substantial reductions in accuracy and increased reaction times.

Conclusions:

• Distraction during the encoding stage is a key factor contributing to working memory impairments in older adults.
• The subtle nature of distractors does not mitigate their disruptive effect on WM encoding in this population.
• Findings highlight the critical role of effective filtering during initial information intake for maintaining working memory in aging.