Table 1.

Behavioral results for groups of younger and older adults.

	Visual distractors			Auditory distractors
	SHUT	GRAY	VD	Silence	WN	AD
YOUNGER ADULTS
Proportion correct	0.59 (0.03)	0.57 (0.03)	0.53 (0.02)	0.61 (0.03)	0.60 (0.02)	0.56 (0.03)
Recognition d'	2.46 (0.13)	2.11 (0.14)	1.97 (0.10)	2.07 (0.12)	2.25 (0.10)	2.23 (0.12)
OLDER ADULTS
Proportion correct	0.48 (0.02)	0.46 (0.03)	0.40 (0.02)
Recognition d'	1.56 (0.14)	1.63 (0.13)	1.70 (0.12)

Summaries for each of three experiments show group means for the proportion of targets given correct responses and for recognition d' (i.e., comparison of hit rate to false alarm rate) in each condition (standard error of the mean). Different groups of younger adults participated in experiments with either visual or auditory distractors: SHUT and Silence presented no external information during memory test trials; GRAY and white noise (WN) presented control stimuli; and visual distractors (VD) and auditory distractors (AD) presented external information irrelevant for the goal of episodic retrieval. A group of older adults completed a standardized neuropsychological battery, and scored within 2.0 standard deviations of their age-matched normative value, before participating in a visual distraction experiment using the same paradigm as the younger adults.