ABSTRACT

Cue competition effects are pervasive in young adults’ learning, but evidence for these effects in older adults’ learning is mixed. For example, although older adults show strong forward blocking, they do not show recovery from overshadowing. We examined whether this could be due to problems with associative binding using a rapid, streamed trial contingency learning task to minimize long-term memory retrieval demands. In a forward blocking paradigm , target cues gained less predictive value when the competing companion cues had high predictive value and this forward blocking effect was similar for younger and older adults. In a backward blocking paradigm, target cues lost more predictive value when the competing companion cues had high predictive value, but this backward blocking effect was greater for younger than older adults. These findings, together with evidence that within-compound associations for companion and target cues mediate backward, but not forward cue competition effects, suggest that a decline in associative binding may be responsible for the absence of backward cue competition effects in older adults’ contingency learning

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摘要

提示竞争效应在年轻人的学习中很普遍，但在老年人学习中这些影响的证据是混合的。例如，虽然老年人表现出强烈的前向阻挡，但他们并没有表现出从阴影中恢复过来。我们使用快速、流式的试验应急学习任务来检查这是否可能是由于关联绑定的问题，以最大限度地减少长期记忆检索需求。在前向阻塞范式中，当竞争的伴随线索具有高预测价值时，目标线索获得的预测价值较小，并且这种前向阻塞效应对于年轻人和老年人来说是相似的。在后向阻塞范式中，当竞争同伴线索具有高预测值时，目标线索失去更多的预测价值，但这种向后阻塞效应对于年轻人比老年人更大。这些发现，

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