A reassessment of negative priming within the inhibition framework of cognitive aging: there is more in it than previously believed.

Three negative-priming studies were carried out to examine whether this paradigm allows a separation of the effects of aging on access, deletion, and restraint control of inhibition. In each study 24 younger (18 to 35 years old) and 24 older (57 to 82 years old) adults were asked to identify pictures. The results reveal difficulties among older adults in preventing the access of distracting perceptual input into responses; however, the ability to restrain inappropriate answers and the ability to delete once-relevant information are not affected by age.