The Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2021 Nov 15;76(10):2013-2022. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbab124.
Declines in the ability to inhibit information, and the consequences to memory of unsuccessful inhibition, have been frequently reported to increase with age. However, few studies have investigated whether sex moderates such effects. Here, we examined whether inhibitory ability may vary as a function of age and sex, and the interaction between these two factors.
202 older (mean age = 69.40 years) and younger (mean age =30.59 years) participants who had equivalent educational attainment and self-reported health completed 2 tasks that varied only in the time point at which inhibition should occur: either prior to, or after, encoding.
While we did not find evidence for age or sex differences in inhibitory processes when information needed to be inhibited prior to encoding, when encoded information being actively held in working memory needed to be suppressed, we found that older women were particularly impaired relative to both younger women and men of either age group.
These results provide further support for the presence of memorial inhibitory deficits in older age, but add nuance by implicating biological sex as an important mediator in this relationship, with it more difficult for older women to inhibit what was once relevant in memory.
信息抑制能力的下降，以及抑制失败对记忆的后果，随着年龄的增长而经常被报道会增加。然而，很少有研究调查性别是否会调节这种影响。在这里，我们研究了抑制能力是否可能随着年龄和性别的变化而变化，以及这两个因素之间的相互作用。
202 名年龄较大（平均年龄=69.40 岁）和年龄较小（平均年龄=30.59 岁）的参与者，他们具有相同的教育程度和自我报告的健康状况，完成了 2 项仅在需要抑制信息的时间点不同的任务：要么在编码之前，要么在编码之后。
虽然我们没有发现抑制过程存在年龄或性别的差异，当需要在编码之前抑制信息时，但当需要抑制主动保持在工作记忆中的编码信息时，我们发现老年女性相对于年轻女性和任何年龄组的男性都受到了特别的损害。
这些结果进一步支持了老年记忆力抑制缺陷的存在，但通过暗示生物学性别是这种关系的一个重要调节因素，增加了细微差别，对于老年女性来说，抑制记忆中曾经相关的信息更加困难。
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