Frequency judgments by young and elderly adults for relevant stimuli with simultaneously present irrelevant stimuli.

Young and elderly adults judged the frequency of occurrence of right words (relevant information) and wrong words (irrelevant information) that had varying numbers of exposure in a multiple-item recognition learning study list. Elderly adults gave lower frequency values to right words than did young adults but only when each right word was accompanied by more than one wrong word in the study list. This outcome was attributed to an age difference in the distractability created by the presence of irrelevant sources of information. By contrast no age difference was found for the frequency judgments given to wrong words, words that presumably are processed at a superficial level by elderly adults as well as young adults.