MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Psychol Aging. 2011 Jun;26(2):397-405. doi: 10.1037/a0022505.
People often encounter reminders to memories that they would prefer not to think about. When this happens, they often try to exclude the unwanted memory from awareness, a process that relies upon inhibitory control. We propose that the ability to regulate awareness of unwanted memories through inhibition declines with advancing age. In two experiments, we examined younger and older adults' ability to intentionally suppress retrieval when repeatedly confronted with reminders to an experience they were instructed to not think about. Older adults exhibited significantly less forgetting of the suppressed items compared to younger adults on a later independent probe test of recall, indicating that older adults failed to inhibit the to-be-avoided memories. These findings demonstrate that the ability to intentionally regulate conscious awareness of unwanted memories through inhibitory control declines with age, highlighting differences in memory control that may be of clinical relevance in the aftermath of unpleasant life events.
人们经常会遇到一些提醒，这些提醒会让他们想起那些他们宁愿不想起的事情。当这种情况发生时，他们通常会试图将不想要的记忆从意识中排除，这个过程依赖于抑制控制。我们提出，通过抑制来调节对不想要的记忆的意识的能力会随着年龄的增长而下降。在两项实验中，我们考察了年轻和年长成年人在反复面对他们被指示不要想的经历的提醒时，有意抑制检索的能力。与年轻成年人相比，年长成年人在稍后的独立回忆探测测试中对被抑制的项目表现出明显较少的遗忘，这表明年长成年人未能抑制要避免的记忆。这些发现表明，通过抑制控制有意调节对不想要的记忆的有意识意识的能力会随着年龄的增长而下降，突出了记忆控制方面的差异，这些差异可能在不愉快的生活事件后具有临床相关性。
