Tomatoes and apples or red and green lines: are age-related interference effects based on competition among concepts or percepts?

Using a negative priming paradigm, the authors tested whether age-related interference effects are due to age differences in perceptual distractibility or in resolving conceptual competition. In samples of 40 younger adults (aged 22-34) and 40 older adults (aged 58-76), the authors found a greater reduction in processing speed for older than for younger adults in trials in which targets were superimposed with distracting objects as compared to single-target trials. When trials were paralleled for perceptual features, that is, when single-target trials were supplemented with nonsense distractors, the age effect became nonsignificant. The results suggest that age-related interference effects are primarily due to age differences in perceptual distractibility.