Synonyms
Age-related suppression deficit; Inhibitory deficit hypothesis; Inhibitory theory
Definition
Age-related decrease in the ability to ignore irrelevant information.
Introduction
Inhibitory theory, first advanced in Hasher and Zacks (1988) and subsequently elaborated on in Hasher et al. (1999; see also Lustig et al. 2007), proposed that the ability to regulate attention is central to memory and other cognitive functions. The theory made four foundational assumptions: (1) that familiar stimuli automatically trigger activation of their representations in memory; (2) that downregulation – or inhibition – of excessive activation is the critical function that works together with (3) goals to constrain thought processes to only (or mostly) relevant information; and (4) there are substantial age and individual differences in the ability to suppress nonrelevant stimuli along with minimal differences in automatic activation. The empirical work on this topic now covers a wide range of...
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Weeks, J.C., Hasher, L. (2017). Aging and Inhibition. In: Pachana, N.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geropsychology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-082-7_232
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-082-7_232
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