Examining hyper-binding in ageing: An individual differences approach

A critical function of episodic memory is the ability to form associations between contextual elements of an experience. While the age-related decline in episodic memory has traditionally been attributed to an associative binding deficit, it has more recently been suggested that older adults may actually bind too much information and recall it in a later memory task – a phenomenon known as hyper-binding. In the current study, we examined the extent to which normal ageing and attentional control independently contribute to hyper-binding. Older (n = 94) and younger (n = 80) adults completed a standard hyper-binding paradigm involving a 1-back task and paired associates memory task to assess implicit associative memory. During a 10-minute filled delay, participants also completed several tasks serving as both fillers and measures of individual differences in attentional control. As predicted, older adults’ attentional control was substantially worse than that of younger adults. Bayes Factors revealed extreme evidence for hyper-binding in both age groups; however, evidence for an age-related difference in hyper-binding was equivocal, and age did not appear to moderate the relationship between attentional control and hyper-binding. We also found evidence against a correlation between individual differences in attentional control and hyper-binding. Together, these findings question whether hyper-binding is an age-related effect, and the role of attentional control in hyper-binding.