ArticleCurrent directions in psychological science2024
Hyper-Binding: Older Adults Form Too Many Associations, Not Too Few.
Article in Current directions in psychological science, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Context reinstatement reveals preserved context memory specificity in typical ageing.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- Aging shifts hippocampal reactivation from selective reinstatement to category-level misbinding during episodic memory.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2026Article
- Aging and memory for temporal order in naturalistic events.Psychology and aging · 2026Article
- The role of inhibitory function in associative memory among older adults and its plasticity.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2025Article
- Review
- Assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on recognition and testimony memory: differential effects in young and older adults.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
Associative memory declines with age, and this decline is thought to stem from a decreased ability to form new associations or bind information together. However, a growing body of work suggests that (a) the binding process itself remains relatively intact with age when tested implicitly and (b) older adults form excessive associations (or "hyper-bind") because of a decreased ability to control attention. In this article, we review evidence for the hyper-binding hypothesis. This work shows that older adults form more nontarget associations than younger adults, which leads to increased interference at retrieval and forgetting, an effect that may extend to others with poor attentional control, such as children and people with attention-deficit disorder. We discuss why hyper-binding is apparent only under implicit test conditions and how it affects memory for everyday events. Although hyper-binding likely contributes to forgetting, it may also confer certain advantages when seemingly irrelevant associations later become relevant.
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