Date of Award

Winter 12-1-2018

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Author's Department

Psychology

Degree Name

Master of Arts (AM/MA)

Degree Type

Thesis

Abstract

Recent evidence from memory paradigms indicates that older adults can sometimes benefit more from processing goal-irrelevant information than younger adults, however these studies have often failed to simultaneously provide evidence of age-related control deficits. In the present experiments, participants initially studied a list of words. They then received a color-naming Stroop task where neutral words were either previously studied or new words. Across three experiments, participants were given different types of memory tests to examine the lingering effects of the neutral words during color-naming in younger and older adults. The results from all three experiments (including an attempted replication study) yielded no evidence that older adults were more likely than younger adults to store the unattended neutral words in memory.

Language

English (en)

Chair and Committee

David Balota

Committee Members

Julie Bugg, Janet Duchek

Comments

Permanent URL: https://doi.org/10.7936/8584-xs85

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