Age-related preservation of statistical learning in distractor suppression.

Abstract

Statistical learning, the ability to extract regularities from the environment, is a fundamental cognitive process that influences many aspects of human cognition. However, it is not yet entirely clear whether-and to what extent-this ability declines with age. While older adults are known to effectively learn environmental regularities to guide their search, it remains unclear whether they can also learn to suppress locations likely to contain a distractor. In the present study, 96 young and 96 older adults (M_ages = 24 vs. 65 years old, respectively) performed an additional singleton task, searching for a shape singleton while a color singleton distractor was present. Crucially, the color distractor appeared more frequently in one specific location than in others. In line with previous research, participants exhibited (a) more effective suppression of distractors appearing at high-probability locations; (b) a clear spatial gradient of suppression, with search efficiency decreasing as the distance from the distractor increased; and (c) hampered target selection when the target appeared at the location that usually contained a distractor. While both young and older adults showed learned suppression primarily in the first block, with the effect persisting throughout the experiment, older adults showed a smaller magnitude of suppression compared to young adults. We conclude that while the ability to learn statistical regularities largely remains intact with age, the behavioral consequences of this learning are reduced with old age. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).