Effects of aging and emotional valence on item directed forgetting and source attributions

Two experiments investigated the effects of aging and emotion on intentional forgetting. Experiment 1 compared 36 young (aged 18-28, M = 20.22, SD = 3.12) and 36 older adults (aged 65-85, M = 71.53, SD = 5.44) on item directed forgetting and source attributions (i.e., assigning a 'remember', 'forget', or 'new' tag during recognition) of positive, negative, and neutral words. Older adults' directed forgetting was reduced for positive words and their source attributions were differentially affected by emotion. Emotion had no effect on young adults' performance. Experiment 2 examined the role of attention in older adults' intentional forgetting. Thirty-six older adults (aged 65-91, M = 73.92, SD = 7.55) completed an emotional item directed forgetting task that incorporated a probe-detection task during encoding to assess the allocation of attention across valence conditions. Older adults again showed reduced directed forgetting for positive words and emotional effects in source attributions; however, results from the probe-detection task indicated the older adults' attention may not have been influenced by the emotional tone of stimuli during encoding.

Effects of aging and emotional valence on item directed forgetting and source attributions

Two experiments investigated the effects of aging and emotion on intentional forgetting. Experiment 1 compared 36 young (aged 18-28, M = 20.22, SD = 3.12) and 36 older adults (aged 65-85, M = 71.53, SD = 5.44) on item directed forgetting and source attributions (i.e., assigning a 'remember', 'forget', or 'new' tag during recognition) of positive, negative, and neutral words. Older adults' directed forgetting was reduced for positive words and their source attributions were differentially affected by emotion. Emotion had no effect on young adults' performance. Experiment 2 examined the role of attention in older adults' intentional forgetting. Thirty-six older adults (aged 65-91, M = 73.92, SD = 7.55) completed an emotional item directed forgetting task that incorporated a probe-detection task during encoding to assess the allocation of attention across valence conditions. Older adults again showed reduced directed forgetting for positive words and emotional effects in source attributions; however, results from the probe-detection task indicated the older adults' attention may not have been influenced by the emotional tone of stimuli during encoding.

Surprise-induced Deafness: Unexpected Auditory Stimuli Capture Attention to the Detriment of Subsequent Detection

Our attention is often captured by unexpected or unusual sounds. Such stimulus- driven control of attention can be adaptive, as potentially relevant events need to be quickly evaluated and acted upon. Attentional capture, however, comes with a cost: Ongoing tasks may be disrupted. In a series of seven experiments (n=773), we investigated the effects of task-irrelevant, rare, and relatively unexpected sounds (“surprise stimuli”) on probe detection in rapid auditory presentation (RAP) streams. Surprise stimuli caused “Surprise-induced Deafness” (SiD), a severe detection deficit that lasted for under one second within each trial and gradually habituated across several trials. SiD was sensitive to informational “surprise”, with larger deficits following stimuli that were infrequent or varied across trials. The effect also generalized: Natural sounds or constructed stimuli could disrupt detection of either spoken letters or simple tones. We also compared SiD to the auditory attentional blink (AAB), a similar paradigm in which goal-directed target processing disrupts probe detection. We found that the two deficits were weakly correlated. We conclude that SiD is a novel perceptual deficit that primarily reflects stimulus-driven attentional capture. It may involve other forms of attentional control as well, thereby reflecting multiple attentional influences on awareness.