Yannick, G. & Serge, N.
Paris Descartes University
Secondary distinctiveness effect means that items that are unusual compared to one’s general knowledge stored in permanent memory are better remembered than common items. The present research investigated two typical cases of secondary-distinctiveness-based effects in ageing: the bizarreness effect and the orthographic distinctiveness effect. Experiment 1 confirmed that ageing diminishes the facilitative effects of bizarreness in a mixed list design with equal numbers of bizarre and common images. We suggest that the absence of bizarreness effect in older adults (above age 70) may be due to reduced attentional resources, since a similar pattern of results was observed for younger adults in the divided attention condition. Experiment 2 studied the orthographic distinctiveness effect in ageing for the first time. Surprisingly, an orthographic distinctiveness effect was observed for all participants including older adults and younger adults in a divided attention condition. Because reduced attentional resources due to normal ageing or to experimental manipulation did not impair the facilitative effects of orthographic distinctiveness, our results suggest that the orthographic distinctiveness effect may be mediated by more automatic processing.