Figure 2.
Results from behavioral experiments. Episodic retrieval scores are presented for three studies that used separate groups of participants. Each panel shows the negative influence of external distraction. For visual distractors (A), the mean proportion of targets given responses with the correct count by a group of younger adults is diminished in the visual distraction (VD) condition relative to the SHUT and GRAY conditions. For auditory distractors (B), the results from younger adults show the same pattern of diminished performance in the auditory distraction (AD) condition, relative to the silence and white noise (WN) conditions, as observed for visual distraction. A comparison between groups of younger and older adults (C) who completed the visual distraction paradigm revealed that the disruptive influence of distraction diminished the fidelity of episodic retrieval to a greater degree for older adults than younger adults. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean, *p < 0.05, and **p < 0.001.