Effects of Aging, Distraction, and Response Pressure on the Binding of Actors and Actions

Two experiments provide evidence for an age-related deficit in the binding of actors with actions that is distinct from binding deficits associated with distraction or response pressure. Young and older adults viewed a series of actors performing different actions. Participants returned 1 week later for a recognition test. Older adults were more likely than young adults to falsely recognize novel conjunctions of familiar actors and actions. This age-related binding deficit occurred even when older adults could discriminate old items from new items just as well as could young adults. Young adults who experienced distraction or time pressure also had difficulty discriminating old items from conjunction items, but this deficit was accompanied by a deficit at discriminating old and new items. These results suggest that distraction and response pressure lead to deficits in memory for stimulus components, with any deficits in binding ability commensurate with these deficits in component memory. Aging, in turn, may lead to binding difficulties that are independent of attention-demanding executive processes involved in maintaining individual stimulus components in working memory, likely reflecting declines in hippocampally mediated associative processes.