Document Type
Article
Department
Psychology (Scripps)
Publication Date
2000
Disciplines
Behavioral Neurobiology | Cognitive Neuroscience | Cognitive Psychology | Life Sciences | Neuroscience and Neurobiology | Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
Older adults were tested on a verbal working memory task that used the item-recognition paradigm. On some trials of this task, response-conflict was created by presenting test-items that were familiar but were not members of a current set of items stored in memory. These items required a negative response, but their familiarity biased subjects toward a positive response. Younger subjects show an interference effect on such trials, and this interference is accompanied by activation of a region of left lateral prefrontal cortex. However, there has been no evidence that the activation in this region is causally related to the interference that the subjects exhibit. In the present study, we demonstrate that older adults show more behavioral interference than younger subjects on this task, and they also show no reliable activation at the same lateral prefrontal site. This leads to the conclusion that this prefrontal site is functionally involved in mediating resolution among conflicting responses or among conflicting representations in working memory.
Rights Information
© 2000 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Terms of Use & License Information
DOI
10.1162/089892900561823
Recommended Citation
Jonides, J., Smith, E. E., Reuter-Lorenz, P., Koeppe, R. A., & Hartley, A. (2000). Age differences in behavior and PET activation reveal differences in interference resolution in verbal working memory. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12, 188-196. doi: 10.1162/089892900561823
Included in
Behavioral Neurobiology Commons, Cognitive Neuroscience Commons, Cognitive Psychology Commons
Comments
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