Older adults' decreased ability to inhibit irrelevant information makes them especially susceptible to the negative effects of simultaneously occurring distraction. For example, older adults are more likely than young adults to process distraction presented during a task, which can result in delayed response times, decreased reading comprehension, disrupted problem solving, and reduced memory for target information. However, there is also some evidence that the tendency to process distraction can actually facilitate older adults' performance when the distraction is congruent with the target information. For example, congruent distraction can speed response times, increase reading comprehension, benefit problem solving, and reduce forgetting in older adults. We review data showing that incongruent distraction can harm older adults' performance, as well as evidence suggesting that congruent distraction can play a supportive role for older adults by facilitating processing of target information. Potential applications of distraction processing are also discussed.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 19 February 2014.
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#18,349,015
of 23,577,761 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in Psychology
#21,494
of 31,442 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#224,940
of 309,169 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Psychology
#149
of 180 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,577,761 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 19th percentile – i.e., 19% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 31,442 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.6. This one is in the 25th percentile – i.e., 25% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 180 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 12th percentile – i.e., 12% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
