Age-related changes in working memory and the ability to ignore distraction

作者：McNab Fiona^*; Zeidman Peter; Rutledge Robb B; Smittenaar Peter; Brown Harriet R; Adams Rick A; Dolan Raymond J

来源：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2015, 112(20): 6515-6518.

DOI：10.1073/pnas.1504162112

• working memory
• aging
• distraction
• attention

A weakened ability to effectively resist distraction is a potential basis for reduced working memory capacity (WMC) associated with healthy aging. Exploiting data from 29,631 users of a smartphone game, we show that, as age increases, working memory (WM) performance is compromised more by distractors presented during WM maintenance than distractors presented during encoding. However, with increasing age, the ability to exclude distraction at encoding is a better predictor of WMC in the absence of distraction. A significantly greater contribution of distractor filtering at encoding represents a potential compensation for reduced WMC in older age.

• 出版日期2015-5-19