Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1991

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Abstract

Four experiments were conducted to examine developmental differences in inhibitory processing. Experiment 1 demonstrated increasing inhibitory efficiency with age in a Stroop-type task. First graders did not show a significant inhibition effect, which was shown by all older groups. With age, greater proportional decrements in response latency were found for Stroop tasks with an inhibition component than for a standard Stroop task. Experiment 2 contrasted cued-recall performance on an unrelated list with performance on a list of scrambled high-associate pairs. Kindergartners, second and fourth graders recalled less than adults, and more of their total output during recall was composed of inappropriate intrusions. Examination of interitem response latencies revealed that kindergartners' processing did not differentiate between inappropriate intrusions and correct responses, whereas older subjects distinguished between correct responses and all errors. In Experiment 3, subjects were read lists of words, were told to forget some of the words, and then were unexpectedly asked to recall the to-be-forgotten words. Adults and fifth graders who were told to forget were able to inhibit the pre-cue items, although the words were available in a recognition task. First graders were not able to inhibit activations of pre-cue items, and they did not show the standard directed-forgetting patterns of performance. Patterns of inhibition for third grade children fell between that of first and fifth graders. In Experiment 4, an intentional/incidental contrast was added to the directed-forgetting paradigm. This experiment replicated earlier work, finding directed-forgetting effects for both incidentally and intentionally learned words. Developmental changes in performance replicated those of Experiment 3. Latencies between consecutively recalled words were also examined. Subjects who were not told to forget words showed a processing advantage, in terms of faster latencies, for primacy items. When subjects were given the forget cue, their processing was slightly quicker for second list half items. In general, results were consistent with the inefficient inhibition hypothesis, suggesting that inhibitory processing becomes more efficient over the elementary school years. Implications for the limited mental resources model, and the inefficient inhibition hypothesis, were discussed.

Extent

95 p.

Comments

FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Adviser: David F. Bjorklund.|Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1991.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Identifier

FADT12274

Format

pdf

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