Can Practice Overcome Age-Related Differences in the Psychological Refractory Period Effect?

Can dual-task practice remove age-related differences in the psychological refractory period (PRP) effect? To answer this question, younger and older individuals practiced 7 blocks of a PRP design, in which Task 1 (T1) required a vocal response to an auditory stimulus and Task 2 (T2) required a manual response to a visual stimulus (Experiment 1). The results showed that practice did not reduce, but rather increased, age-related differences in PRP interference. Using the trained individuals, the introduction of a less complex new T1 (Experiment 2) or a less complex new T2 (Experiment 3) with the task previously practiced reduced the PRP interference but only in older adults. The authors propose that older adults suffer from a large task-switch cost that is more sensitive to task complexity than to the amount of practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Effect of Old Age on the Learning of Supraspan Sequences.

Two experiments examined age-related differences in sequence learning using computerized versions of the D. O. Hebb (1961) paradigm. In this learning task, the participant executes immediate serial recall of 24 supraspan sequences. Without the participants' knowledge, 1 sequence is presented several times. Repetition leads to improved recall of this repeated sequence relative to random sequences. Results showed a dissociation in age-related learning deficits depending on the nature of the to-be-remembered material. The effect of repetition is similar for younger and older adults with familiar and unfamiliar verbal material (words and pseudowords) but is significantly reduced in older adults when learning is assessed with a visuospatial version of Hebb's supraspan learning task (P. M. Corsi, 1972). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An individual differences analysis of ability and strategy influences: Age-related differences in associative learning.

The relationships among abilities, strategies, and performance on an associative learning task were investigated for young (aged 17 to 34) and older adults (aged 60 to 82). Participants received extensive practice on a noun-pair task in which they could use a visual-scanning strategy or a memory-retrieval strategy. Older adults were more likely to use the scanning strategy. Age differences were reduced when comparisons were made only for participants using a retrieval strategy. Associative memory was predictive of learning on the task, and semantic memory access speed was predictive of practiced performance. Practiced performance on a memory-search task that also required associative learning was predictive of practiced noun-pair performance. Models of ability-performance relationships for skill acquisition are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit learning of a nonverbal sequence in younger and older adults.

Two experiments examined age-related differences in implicit serial learning using the M. J. Nissen and P. Bullemer (see record 1987-13436-001) task. Younger adults and 2 samples of older adults who differed in educational attainment, occupational status, and verbal ability were given a 10-trial repeating sequence embedded in 100-trial blocks. On each trial, participants pressed a key that matched a designated spatial location. Implicit learning was inferred from the difference in reaction time (RT) between a random sequence trial block and the immediately preceding block with the repeating sequence. Results indicated that negative transfer effects were comparable for the younger and higher ability older adults, but lower ability older adults showed less evidence of implicit learning. On an explicit task, younger and higher ability older adults were more accurate than the lower ability older adults. The implications of these findings for current views on implicit learning in adulthood are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit Sequence Learning: Effects of Level of Structure, Adult Age, and Extended Practice.

The influence of structure and age on sequence learning was investigated by testing 24 young and 24 older participants for 10 sessions in an alternating serial response time task in which pattern trials alternated with random trials. Individuals encountered lag-2 or lag-3 structure, and learning was measured by the difference (in response time and accuracy) between pattern and random trials. Both ages learned lag-2 structure, but the young learned more than the older participants. Only the young people learned lag-3 structure, and they did so more slowly and to a lesser degree than they learned lag-2 structure. These age deficits in higher order sequence learning after extended practice are consistent with simultaneity theory and with theories positing that age-related deficits in neuromodulation lead to less distinctive representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in dual-task performance after practice.

This study investigated whether older adults could acquire the ability to perform 2 cognitive operations in parallel in a paradigm in which young adults had been shown to be able to do so (K. Oberauer & R. Kliegl, 2004). Twelve young and 12 older adults practiced a numerical and a visuospatial continuous memory updating task in single-task and dual-task conditions for 16 to 24 sessions. After practice, 9 young adults were able to process the 2 tasks without dual-task costs, but none of the older adults had reached the criterion of parallel processing. The results suggest a qualitative difference between young and older adults in how they approach dual-task situations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Practice schedules and the use of component skills in problem solving.

In motor and verbal learning, random practice schedules produce poorer acquisition performance but superior retention relative to blocked practice. We extend this contextual interference effect to the case of learning cognitive procedural skills to be used in problem solving. Subjects in three experiments practiced calculation with Boolean functions. After this acquisition phase, subjects solved problems requiring these procedures. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated superior transfer to problem solving for skills acquired under random schedules. In Experiment 3, subjects practiced component skills in a blocked schedule, with one of four tasks—same–different judgment, mental arithmetic, short-term memory, or long-term memory—intervening between trials. For same–different judgments and mental arithmetic, transfer performance was comparable to that found for random schedules in Experiments 1 and 2. This result suggests that the differences depend on processing rather than storage demands of intertrial activity. Implications for theories of problem solving and part–whole transfer are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age Differences in the Correction Processes of Context-Induced Biases: When Correction Succeeds.

Previous research has demonstrated that older adults are more susceptible than young adults to context-induced biases in social judgments. The primary goal of this study was to examine the conditions under which older adults could or could not correct their biases. Young and older adults completed a social judgment task that normally would produce contrast biases in 3 correction cue conditions: no cue, subtle cue, and blatant cue. It was found that both young and older adults corrected their biases in the blatant cue condition, but only young adults corrected in the subtle cue condition. The results suggest that older adults may need more environmental support in correcting their biases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dissociations in Perceptual Learning Revealed by Adult Age Differences in Adaptation to Time-Compressed Speech.

When presented with several time-compressed sentences, young adults' performance improves with practice. Such adaptation has not been studied in older adults. To study age-related changes in perceptual learning, the authors tested young and older adults' ability to adapt to degraded speech. First, the authors showed that older adults, when equated for starting accuracy with young adults, adapted at a rate and magnitude comparable to young adults. However, unlike young adults, older adults failed to transfer this learning to a different speech rate and did not show additional benefit when practice exceeded 20 sentences. Listeners did not adapt to speech degraded by noise, indicating that adaptation to time-compressed speech was not attributable to task familiarity. Finally, both young and older adults adapted to spectrally shifted noise-vocoded speech. The authors conclude that initial perceptual learning is comparable in young and older adults but maintenance and transfer of this learning decline with age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acquiring a Cognitive Skill With a New Repeating Version of the Tower of London Task.

A computerized version of the Tower of London task was used to investigate cognitive skill learning. Thirty-six healthy volunteers were assigned to either a random condition (nonrecurring problems), or to a sequence condition in which, unbeknownst to the subjects, a repeating sequence of three problems was presented. Indices of execution, planning, and total time, as well as number of moves performed, were used to measure behavioural change. Subjects' performance improved in both conditions across blocks of practice. A distinct learning effect related to the repeating sequence was also observed. This suggests that a specific skill that reflects procedural learning of the strategies, rules, and procedures pertaining to repeating problems can develop over and above a more general skill at solving cognitive planning problems with practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of practice schedule and critical thinking prompts on learning and transfer of a complex judgment task.

Many instructional strategies that appear to improve learners' performance during training may not realize adequate posttest performance or transfer to a job. The converse has been found to be true as well: Instructional strategies that appear to slow the learner's progress during training often lead to better posttraining or transfer performance. For example, many studies have shown beneficial effects of random over blocked practice on transfer of learning, even though blocked practice often leads to better performance during the training session. In a 2 × 3 factorial experiment (N = 120), with the factors practice schedule (random, blocked) and critical thinking prompts (before task, after task, none), this study investigates whether this also applies to complex judgment tasks and whether critical thinking prompts can enhance the effectiveness of particular practice schedules. It is hypothesized that prompts provided after task execution yield best transfer in a random practice schedule, whereas prompts provided before task execution yield best transfer in a blocked schedule. In line with this hypothesis, a blocked schedule led to better performance than random practice during training but not on the transfer test, where a random schedule was beneficial. The hypothesized interaction effect was also found: Critical thinking prompts after task execution significantly benefit transfer performance of participants following a random schedule, and transfer performance following a blocked schedule can be a little enhanced through providing critical thinking prompts before task execution. These results warrant instruction in critical thinking processes to teach complex judgment tasks, using random practice schedules combined with critical thinking prompts provided after task execution. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

How incidental sequence learning creates reportable knowledge: The role of unexpected events.

Research on incidental sequence learning typically is concerned with the characteristics of implicit or nonconscious learning. In this article, the authors aim to elucidate the cognitive mechanisms that contribute to the generation of explicit, reportable sequence knowledge. According to the unexpected-event hypothesis (P. A. Frensch, H. Haider, D. Rünger, U. Neugebauer, S. Voigt, & J. Werg, 2003), individuals acquire reportable knowledge when they search for the cause of an experienced deviation from the expected task performance. The authors experimentally induced unexpected events by disrupting the sequence learning process with a modified serial reaction time task and found that, unlike random transfer sequences, a systematic transfer sequence increased the availability of reportable sequence knowledge. The lack of a facilitative effect of random sequences is explained by the detrimental effect of random events on the presumed search process that generates reportable knowledge. This view is corroborated in a final experiment in which the facilitative effect of systematic transfer blocks is offset by a concurrent secondary task that was introduced to interfere with the search process during transfer. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential effects of task complexity on contextual interference in a drawing task

A large number of studies demonstrated the beneficial effects of contextual interference (CI) created by a random practice of different task variations during training on the retention and transfer of motor skills. Current interpretations of this phenomenon assume that random practice engages the subjects in deep and elaborate processing of movement related information, whereas blocked practice results in more superficial processing leading to poorer performance on later retention and transfer tests. According to this line of interpretation, we hypothesised that the complexity of the task to be learned could modulate the effects of CI. If the task is sufficiently complex, it could force the subjects to rely on such elaborate processing, and the beneficial effects of the intertask interference created by random practice could be obscured in that case. We tested this hypothesis by analysing the effects of practice schedule (random vs. blocked), on the acquisition, retention and transfer of learning in a drawing task where subjects had to reproduce accurately, without visual control, geometrical patterns presented on a video screen, as a function of task complexity defined by the number of segments (two, three or four) of each pattern. The results indicated a clear beneficial effect of random over blocked practice on delayed retention and transfer. However, this CI effect was only observed in subjects who learned the simplest movements, and was not observed in subjects who practised the more complex task. These results are discussed in terms of intratask interference created by the planning of multiple movements and the processing of knowledge of results (KR) when the number of drawing movements is increased. These findings support the assumption that the level of cognitive effort in which the subjects are engaged during training is a main factor influencing long-term retention and transfer of motor skills.     

Implicit learning of predictive relationships in three-element visual sequences by young and old adults.

Knowledge of sequential relationships enables future events to be anticipated and processed efficiently. Research with the serial reaction time task (SRTT) has shown that sequence learning often occurs implicitly without effort or awareness. Here, the authors report 4 experiments that use a triplet-learning task (TLT) to investigate sequence learning in young and older adults. In the TLT, people respond only to the last target event in a series of discrete, 3-event sequences or triplets. Target predictability is manipulated by varying the triplet frequency (joint probability) and/or the statistical relationships (conditional probabilities) among events within the triplets. Results reveal that both groups learned, though older adults showed less learning of both joint and conditional probabilities. Young people used the statistical information in both cues, but older adults relied primarily on information in the 2nd cue alone. The authors conclude that the TLT complements and extends the SRTT and other tasks by offering flexibility in the kinds of sequential statistical regularities that may be studied as well as by controlling event timing and eliminating motor response sequencing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preserved Spatial Memory Over Brief Intervals in Older Adults.

Two studies compared young and older adults' memory for location information after brief intervals. Experiment 1 found that accuracy of intentional spatial memory for individual locations was similar in young and older participants for set sizes of 3 and 6. Both groups also encoded individual locations in relation to the larger configuration of locations. Experiment 2 showed that like young adults, older adults' latency to respond to a test probe in a letter working memory task was negatively influenced by spatial information that was irrelevant to the task. This interference effect indicated preserved incidental memory for spatial information in older adults. Together, these data suggest that initial encoding of spatial information for relatively small numbers of items is largely preserved in healthy older adults and that representations of spatial information persist over short intervals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in implicit learning of higher order dependencies in serial patterns.

3 experiments examined serial pattern learning in younger and older adults. Unlike the usual repeating pattern, the sequences alternated between events from a repeating pattern and those determined randomly. The results indicated that no one was able to describe the regularity, but with practice every individual in all 3 age groups (including old old) became faster, more accurate, or both, on pattern trials than on random trials. Although this indicates that adults of all ages are able to learn second-order statistical dependencies in a sequence, age-related deficits were obtained in the magnitude of pattern learning. There were also age differences in what was learned, with only younger people revealing sensitivity to higher order statistical dependencies in the sequence. In addition, whereas younger people revealed evidence of their pattern learning in a subsequent conceptually driven production test, young-old and old-old people did not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences and similarities in the shift from computation to retrieval during reading comprehension.

Previous research has established that 1 mechanism underlying speed-ups in task performance with practice involves a shift from computational processing to retrieval of information encoded earlier in practice. To what extent do young and older adults differ in shifts from computation to retrieval with practice in reading comprehension? Young and older adults read short stories containing an unfamiliar noun–noun combination (e.g., bee caterpillar) followed by disambiguating information indicating the combination’s meaning (either the normatively dominant meaning or an alternative subordinate meaning). Stories were presented either once or repeatedly across practice blocks. In Experiment 1, both age groups shifted from computation to retrieval with practice for the repeated items. However, older adults were slower to shift (e.g., older adults showed slower convergence of reading times for repeated subordinate and dominant items). Results of Experiment 2 suggested that the slower shift was due to age differences in bias against using retrieval rather than associative learning differences. The authors compare age differences in retrieval shifts in reading versus other tasks and discuss implications for age differences in the regulation of reading comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning mode and exemplar sequencing in unsupervised category learning.

Exemplar sequencing effects in incidental and intentional unsupervised category learning were investigated to illuminate how people form categories without an external teacher. Stimuli were perfectly separable into 2 categories based on 1 of 2 dimensions of variation. Sequencing of the first 20 training stimuli was manipulated. In the blocked condition, 10 Category A stimuli were followed by 10 Category B stimuli. In the intermixed condition, these 20 stimuli were ordered randomly. Experiment 1 revealed an interaction between learning mode and sequence, with better intentional learning for intermixed sequences but better incidental learning for blocked sequences. Experiment 2 showed that manipulating trial-to-trial variability along each dimension can impact intentional learning. Training sequences that emphasized variation along the category-relevant dimension resulted in better performance than sequences that emphasized variation along the category-irrelevant dimension. The results suggest that unsupervised category learning is influenced by the mode of learning and the order and nature of encountered exemplars. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and the vulnerability of speech to dual task demands.

Tracking a digital pursuit rotor task was used to measure dual task costs of language production by young and older adults. Tracking performance by both groups was affected by dual task demands: time on target declined and tracking error increased as dual task demands increased from the baseline condition to a moderately demanding dual task condition to a more demanding dual task condition. When dual task demands were moderate, older adults' speech rate declined but their fluency, grammatical complexity, and content were unaffected. When the dual task was more demanding, older adults' speech, like young adults' speech, became highly fragmented, ungrammatical, and incoherent. Vocabulary, working memory, processing speed, and inhibition affected vulnerability to dual task costs: vocabulary provided some protection for sentence length and grammaticality, working memory conferred some protection for grammatical complexity, and processing speed provided some protection for speech rate, propositional density, coherence, and lexical diversity. Further, vocabulary and working memory capacity provided more protection for older adults than for young adults although the protective effect of processing speed was somewhat reduced for older adults as compared to the young adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceived self-efficacy and everyday problem solving among young and older adults.

This research tested the hypothesis that age differences in both self-efficacy perceptions and problem-solving performance would vary as a function of the ecological relevance of problems to young and older adults. The authors developed novel everyday problem-solving stimuli that were ecologically representative of problems commonly confronted by young adults (young-adult problems), older adults (older adult problems), or both (common problems). Performance on an abstract problem solving task lacking in ecological representativeness (the Tower of Hanoi problem) also was examined. Although young persons had higher self-efficacy beliefs and performance levels on the Tower of Hanoi task problem and the young-adult problems, this pattern reversed in the domain of older adult problems, where the self-efficacy beliefs and performance of older persons exceeded those of the young. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)