The Priming Effect Of Irrelevant Information Processing After Star Counting Test

Memory retrieval can occur by at least two routes: a deliberate one and anunintentional one. The former one is when people attempts to retrieve an event or fact, andthe latter one is when individual’s behavior is triggered by the past without his or herknowledge or awareness. This study assessed the influence of irrelevant speech on acognitive task (counting stars test presented on the computer screen). In addition, this studywill assess the influence of the irrelevant speech in younger and older adults. includingexperiment1and experiment2. Experiment1used a star counting task and a sentence taskto determine whether older adults process more irrelevant information than do youngeradults. The second part of the study required participants to identify the first letter of thelast word in either previously heard context sentences or new context sentences. Sentencesare all muffled. The reaction time showed older adults’ performence are better in youngeradults. Contrary to the predictions of the inhibitory deficit hypothesis, younger and olderadults were similarly affected by irrelevant information during the star counting andsentence tasks. The presence of irrelevant speech caused both younger and older adults tocount stars more slowly. Both younger and older adults were more accurate whenidentifying the last word of previously presented sentences. These results suggest thatyounger and older adults process irrelevant information to a similar degree.