Abstract

TREJO-MORALES, PATRICIA  and  CANSINO, SELENE. Effects of Divided Attention on Episodic Memory in Young and Older Adults. Rev. colomb. psicol. [online]. 2011, vol.20, n.2, pp.181-191. ISSN 0121-5469.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of dividing attention during encoding and retrieval in young and older adults, when the memory and secondary tasks are performed in the same modality. The 72 participants performed a visual discrimination secondary task while they classified images (natural-artificial) during encoding, or they recognized them (oldnew) during retrieval. The number of errors in the secondary task was higher in the older adults than in the younger adults. The recognition accuracy of older adults did not vary when attention was divided during encoding and retrieval, while young adults' recognition rates were lower when attention was divided during encoding. The ability to manage attentional resources diminishes during aging.

Keywords : attention; encoding; aging; episodic memory; recognition; retrieval.

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