The effect of motivational incentives on face-name hyper-binding in older adults

Hyper-binding refers to the spontaneous formation of target-distractor associations in older adults, with consequences for subsequent memory. While hyper-binding reflects a loss of attentional and mnemonic selectivity in aging, a growing literature suggests that motivational states modulate cognitive performance in both younger and older adults. In the current study, healthy younger and older adults (N = 48 in both age groups) completed a face-name hyper-binding task with or without motivational incentives during incidental encoding. Results revealed a motivation-related decrease in hyper-binding in older adults, leading to a paradoxical motivation-related memory decrement in this age group. These findings suggest that reward motivation can counteract age-related deficits in inhibition and attentional selectivity, without necessarily boosting memory performance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).