Abstract
Positive mood states are believed to broaden the focus of attention in younger adults, but it is unclear whether the same is true for older adults. Here we examined one consequence of broader attention that has been shown in young adults: that memory for distraction is greater for those in a positive mood. In the current study, positive and neutral moods were induced in older adults (M = 67.9) prior to a 1-back task in which participants were instructed to attend to relevant pictures and ignore distracting words. Following a 10-min filled interval, participants performed a word fragment completion task that tested implicit memory for the distracting words from the 1-back task. Older adults in the positive mood group showed greater implicit memory for previous distraction compared to those in the neutral mood group. These findings suggest that affect influences the ability to regulate attention in a similar manner for younger and older adults.
Highlights
Affective states are believed to serve a variety of functions including regulating the bandwidth of attention
The two mood groups did not differ in 1back task performance, they did differ in subsequent knowledge for distraction presented during that task
Ratings made at other times did not differ between mood groups, and had no influence on priming for distraction
Summary
Affective states are believed to serve a variety of functions including regulating the bandwidth of attention. Attentional broadening can have negative effects on cognition which can manifest in a number of ways, including increased susceptibility to distraction. Positive affect can increase interference from distractors during both flanker (Rowe et al, 2007) and set switching tasks (Dreisbach and Goschke, 2004) relative to neutral or negative affect. Positive affect decreases performance on tasks requiring inhibitory control, such as directed forgetting (Bäuml and Kuhbandner, 2009) and negative affective priming (Goeleven et al, 2007). It seems plausible that positive affect may impair the ability to ignore irrelevant distraction by slackening inhibitory control
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