Centre for Policy on Ageing



Gaze aversion — spared inhibition for visual distraction in older adults
Author(s)	Gilles O Einstein, Julie L Earles, Heather M Collins
Journal title	Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, vol 57B, no 1, January 2002
Pages	pp P65-P73
Keywords	Cognitive processes ; Mental clarity ; Memory and Reminiscence.
Annotation	Our everyday environment is filled with irrelevant and potentially distracting information. Recent research has shown that during retrieval, people tend to look away from distraction or close their eyes, and that averting one's gaze benefits retrieval. The authors examined the extent to which there are age-related differences in the benefits of gaze aversion, and whether such benefits extend to encoding. Relative to looking at complex stimuli, closing the eyes and looking at simple stimuli produced reliable improvements in memory for both younger and older people at both encoding and retrieval. Contrary to the expectation that older people have general inhibitory deficits, the benefits of gaze aversion were similar for younger and older people for both encoding and retrieval. These results are consistent with the view that older people have spared inhibitory functioning for distraction appearing in fixed locations. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-020305213 A
Classmark	DA: DF: DB
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.