Learning by distraction versus repeating study in older and younger adults

In this experiment, we assessed whether the tendency of older people to process distracting information attenuated age-related differences in forgetting when studied items are covertly processed during an unrelated task. This was contrasted to a condition in which studied items were overtly rehearsed. Younger and older adults studied and freely recalled a list of words during an immediate test and again during a delayed test after a 15-min delay. During this delay, participants completed either a 1-back task in which half of the studied words appeared as distractors (covert rehearsal), or a regular repetition of half the studied words (overt rehearsal). The results showed that overt rehearsal was overall better than covert rehearsal for improving free recall, without any attenuation of age-related differences. There was also a slight improvement of the covert rehearsal on recognition performance, but not related to recollective processes.