Age differences and similarities in the effects of cues and prompts.

A series of 6 experiments investigated the use of cues and prompts by younger and older adults. Cues provide useful information about an impending target, even though the information is not always valid. Prompts provide an instruction about what aspect of the target is to be responded to. The costs and benefits of cues were most consistent with models in which the attentional resources that are shifted in response to the cue were as large or larger in older adults as they were in younger adults. The results with both cues and prompts converged on the conclusion that the time course of processing and using a cue or prompt is the same in younger and older adults. The attentional resources tapped by these procedures cannot be the diminished processing resource to which many age differences in cognitive performance are attributed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Structural operational capacities in integrative spatial ability.

Four experiments were conducted to explore a distinction between structural capacity, the maximum number of informational units that can be temporarily stored, and operational capacity, the number of processing operations that can be executed while simultaneously preserving the products of earlier processing. The results, from a synthesis task requiring the integration of successively presented line segments into a composite stimulus, revealed that there were little or no age differences in structural capacity but large age differences favoring young adults in operational capacity. An attempt was also made to determine how much earlier information was available after each additional processing operation, but equivocal results precluded a definitive conclusion about the exact nature of the age differences in operational capacity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult age differences in the use of distractor homogeneity during visual search.

Previous research has suggested that an age-related decline may exist in the ability to inhibit distracting information during visual search. The present experiments used a conjunction search task in which the within-item features of the target (an upright L) and the distractors (rotated Ls) were identical. In each of 2 experiments, both young and older adults searched the display significantly more rapidly when the distractors were all rotated in the same direction (homogeneous) than when the distractors were rotated in different directions (heterogeneous). The concept of a generalized, age-related slowing was able to account for many aspects of the data, although the degree of relative improvement associated with distractor homogeneity was greater for young adults than for older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Converging evidence that visuospatial cognition is more age-sensitive than verbal cognition.

In 3 separate experiments, the same samples of young and older adults were tested on verbal and visuospatial processing speed tasks, verbal and visuospatial working memory tasks, and verbal and visuospatial paired-associates learning tasks. In Experiment 1, older adults were generally slower than young adults on all speeded tasks, but age-related slowing was much more pronounced on visuospatial tasks than on verbal tasks. In Experiment 2, older adults showed smaller memory spans than young adults in general, but memory for locations showed a greater age difference than memory for letters. In Experiment 3, older adults had greater difficulty learning novel information than young adults overall, but older adults showed greater deficits learning visuospatial than verbal information. Taken together, the differential deficits observed on both speeded and unspeeded tasks strongly suggest that visuospatial cognition is generally more affected by aging than verbal cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult age differences in working memory.

Two experiments were conducted to determine whether adult age differences in working memory should be attributed to less efficient processing, a smaller working memory storage capacity, or both. In Experiment 1, young, middle-age, and older adults solved 3 additional problems before giving the answers to any. Older adults added as well as young and middle-age adults but showed a more pronounced serial position curve across the 3 problem positions. In Experiment 2, young and older adults constructed linear orderings (e.g., ABCD) from pairwise information presented in sentences (e.g., BC). Manipulations involving processing (e.g., type of sentence) did not interact with age differences, but those involving storage capacity (e.g., ordering length) did. All main effects and interactions support the hypothesis of a smaller storage capacity but do not rule out some processing deficit in older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A molar entropy model of age differences in spatial memory

Two very-short-term-memory, spatial scanning aging experiments were conducted involving a graphics character as a target stimulus. On the probe portion of a trial, the stimulus was presented in the same position as it was on the target portion of the trial (i.e., a same trial) 50% of the time. However, on the remaining 50% of the trials, the probe stimulus was shifted (or transposed) 1, 2, or 3 positions to the right or left of the original presentation (target) position. In Experiment 1, exposure duration was manipulated. In Experiment 2, the number of potential target display positions was manipulated. For both experiments, older adults showed larger transposition distance effects than younger adults for errors. In the past (e.g., P.A. Allen, 1990, 1991), this effect has been attributed to higher levels of internal noise (entropy) in older than younger adults. This research provides converging operations to this contention by using statistical physics methods to rigorously compute the entropy in a molar neural network across age groups. After successfully fitting the statistical mechanics model to the data, the model is proved to have external validity by fitting a simplified version of it to an earlier spatial memory aging experiment reported by P. R. Bruce and J. F. Herman (1986). The results of both traditional reaction time and error rate analyses, as well as the entropy modeling analyses, indicated that older adults exhibited higher levels of entropy than did the younger adults and that this effect appeared to be generalized across processing stage.     

False memories for end-of-life decisions.

Objective: To examine people's false memories for end-of-life decisions. Design: In Study 1, older adults decided which life-sustaining treatments they would want if they were seriously ill. They made these judgments twice, approximately 12 months apart. At Time 2, older adults and their self-selected surrogate decision makers tried to recall the older adults' Time 1 decisions. In Study 2, younger adults made treatment decisions twice, approximately 4 months apart. At Time 2, younger adults tried to recall their Time 1 decisions. Main Outcome Measures: Percentage of participants who falsely remembered that their original treatment decisions were the same as their current decisions. Results: In Study 1, older adults falsely remembered that 75% of their original decisions were the same as their current decisions; surrogates falsely thought that 86% of older adults' decisions were the same. In Study 2, younger adults falsely remembered that 69% of their original decisions were the same as their current decisions. Conclusion: Age alone cannot account for people's false memories of their end-of-life decisions; we discuss other mechanisms. The results have practical implications for policies that encourage people to make legal documents specifying their end-of-life treatment decisions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Narrative comprehension and aging: The fate of completed goal information.

Previous research has shown that older adults are able to use situation models in a manner similar to younger adults. However, other areas of cognition have shown that older adults are less able to remove irrelevant information from the current stream of processing. Accordingly, the authors tested whether older and younger adults would differ in reducing the availability of information about a completed goal in a situation model during narrative comprehension. In 2 experiments, memory probes tested for the availability of protagonist goal information during reading when it was either failed goal, completed goal, or neutral information. The results for both age groups showed that goal information was most available in the failed goal condition, less available in the completed goal condition, and least available in the neutral condition. No reliable differences between younger and older adults in the pattern of response times were observed. Reading time data were also examined to explore the possibility that older adults engage in a longer wrap-up period after a goal is completed, but no such difference was found. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of aging on memory for presentation modality.

Two experiments were conducted to examine evidence for the automatic processing of information about presentation modality in older adults. Young (mean age?=?22 years) and older adults (mean age?=?69 years) were asked to learn a mixed-modality (auditory and visual) list of nouns, then to recall the target words, and finally to identify the presentation modality of each word on a recognition list. Half of the participants in each study were told in advance to also remember modality information. The experiments differed in the number of judgments that had to be made about each word in the recognition list. Two of Hasher and Zacks' (1979) criteria for automatic processing (no effect of intentionality and minimal interference with other processes occurring at the same time) were satisfied. The minimal developmental change criterion, however, was not. Although the performance of both age groups was above chance, some decrement in modality memory occurred in the older adults. The results both support the notion of an automatic encoding process for modality information and raise questions about the adequacy of the age-invariance criterion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory for age–face associations in younger and older adults: The role of generation and schematic support.

Memory for ages of unfamiliar faces was examined in an associative memory task to determine whether generation as well as schematic support (cues from faces) would enhance later cued recall of the age information and reduce older adults' associative deficit. Participants studied faces and were either presented with the age or first had to guess before being shown the correct age. Later, participants were given a cued-recall test. Both younger and older adults exhibited associative memory enhancements from first generating the ages at encoding (a generation effect) despite the fact the initial generation was often inaccurate. Although older adults recalled fewer ages overall compared with younger adults, older adults were able to remember the age information for older faces equally as well as younger adults. However, when errors committed during generation were large and when schematic support was not available to support encoding and retrieval (when the age information was inconsistent given the cues from the face), generating was no longer beneficial for either older or younger adults. Thus, although older adults display an associative deficit when remembering specific age–face associations, this can be reduced through the use of prior knowledge and generation at encoding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging, emotion, and health-related decision strategies: Motivational manipulations can reduce age differences.

According to socioemotional selectivity theory, age-related constraints on time horizons are associated with motivational changes that increasingly favor goals related to emotional well-being. Such changes have implications for emotionally taxing tasks such as making decisions, especially when decisions require consideration of unpleasant information. This study examined age differences in information acquisition and recall in the health care realm. Using computer-based decision scenarios, 60 older and 60 young adults reviewed choice criteria that contained positive, negative, and neutral information about different physicians and health care plans. As predicted, older adults reviewed and recalled a greater proportion of positive than of negative information compared with young adults. Age differences were eliminated when motivational manipulations elicited information-gathering goals or when time perspective was controlled statistically. Implications for improving decision strategies in older adults are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why older adults make more immediate treatment decisions about cancer than younger adults.

Literature relevant to medical decision making was reviewed, and a model was outlined for testing. Two studies examined whether older adults make more immediate decisions than younger adults about treatments for prostate or breast cancer in authentic scenarios. Findings clearly showed that older adults were more likely to make immediate decisions than younger adults. The research is important because it not only demonstrates the consistency of this age-related effect across disease domains, gender, ethnic groups, and prevalent education levels but begins to investigate a model to explain the effect. Major reasons for the effect focus on treatment knowledge, interest and engagement, and cognitive resources. Treatment knowledge, general cancer knowledge, interest, and cognitive resources relate to different ways of processing treatment information and preferences for immediate versus delayed decision making. Adults with high knowledge of treatments on a reliable test tended to make immediate treatment decisions, which supports the knowledge explanation. Adults with more cognitive resources and more interest tended to delay their treatment decisions. Little support was found for a cohort explanation for the relationship between age and preference for immediate medical decision making. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related differences and similarities in dual-task interference.

Differences between younger adults (mean age, 20.7 years) and older adults (mean age, 72.7 years) in dual-task performance were examined in 7 experiments in which the overlap between 2 simple tasks was systematically varied. The results were better fit by a task-switching model in which age was assumed to produce generalized slowing than by a shared-capacity model in which age was assumed to reduce processing resources. The functional architecture of task processing appears the same in younger and older adults. There was no evidence for a specific impairment in the ability of older adults to manage simultaneous tasks. There was evidence for both input and output interference, which may be greater in older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in overlapping-task performance: Evidence for efficient parallel processing in older adults.

Two psychological refractory period (PRP) experiments were conducted to examine overlapping processing in younger and older adults. A shape discrimination task (triangle or rectangle) for Task I (TI) and a lexical-decision task (word or nonword) for Task 2 (T2) were used. PRP effects, response time for T2 increasing as stimulus onset synchrony (SOA) decreased, were obtained for both age groups. The effect of word frequency on T2 was smaller at the short SOA than at the long SOA, reflecting slack effects, which were larger for older than younger adults in both experiments. These results suggest that older adults can perform lexical access of T2 in parallel with the processing of T2, at least as efficiently as younger adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of perceptual and conceptual processing on memory for words and voice: different patterns for young and old

In two experiments younger and older adults listened to a list of words presented auditorily by two speakers. The subjects processed each word either perceptually (voice judgements) or conceptually (pleasantness judgements), and were then given memory tasks for the words and the presenting voice. In the word-recognition task the two age groups benefited equally from conceptual as opposed to perceptual processing. In the voice memory task, however, conceptual processing improved performance relative to perceptual processing in the younger subjects (significantly so in Experiment 1), but conceptual processing was associated with decreased performance in the older group (significantly so in Experiment 2). These results suggest that whereas older subjects exhibit a trade-off in memory for item and attribute information, younger subjects exhibit a pattern of support, in which conceptual processing benefits memory for both items and their attributes.     

Age differences in lapses of intention in the Stroop task

The study evaluated the hypothesis that older adults are more susceptible to lapses of intention (lapses) than are younger adults, and explored the factors contributing to these lapses. The findings of three experiments examining the pattern of intrusion errors in the Stroop task revealed that older adults were more likely to experience lapses than were younger adults, and that lapses tended to be of longer duration in older than younger adults. Lapses were observed under conditions of suboptimal controlled attentional processing, when task conditions required the allocation of this processing in the service of multiple behavioral goals, and during periods of slowed responding. The findings of these experiments are consistent with those from a growing number of studies indicating that older adults are more susceptible to lapses of intention than younger adults.     

Adult age differences in shifting focused attention.

Young and older adults performed a choice response task in which 1 of 2 target letters was presented visually at 1 of 4 display locations. In 2 experiments, the validity of a target location cue and the presence of nontarget characters (distractors) were varied. With target-only displays and 40% cue validity (Experiment 1), the estimated time to shift attention between display locations was essentially 0 msec for both age groups. With 70% cue validity, Experiment 2 demonstrated significant increases in the attention shift time as a function of both increased age and the presence of distractors (asterisks). The results suggest that age-related changes in the shifting of focused attention are minimal except when the processing of nontarget information is required. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of age on detection of emotional information.

Age differences were examined in affective processing, in the context of a visual search task. Young and older adults were faster to detect high arousal images compared with low arousal and neutral items. Younger adults were faster to detect positive high arousal targets compared with other categories. In contrast, older adults exhibited an overall detection advantage for emotional images compared with neutral images. Together, these findings suggest that older adults do not display valence-based effects on affective processing at relatively automatic stages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Overriding age differences in attentional capture with top-down processing.

Two experiments investigated the influence of top-down information on adult age differences in the ability to search for singleton targets using spatial cues. In Experiment 1, both younger and older adults were equally able to use target-related top-down information (target feature predictability) to avoid attentional capture by uninformative (25% valid) cues. However, during informative (75% valid) cue conditions, older adults demonstrated less efficient use of this cue-related top-down information. The authors extended these findings in Experiment 2 using cues that were either consistent or inconsistent with top-down feature settings. Results from this second experiment showed that although older adults were capable of avoiding attentional capture when provided with top-down information related to target features, capture effects for older adults were notably larger than those of younger adults when only bottom-up information was available. The authors suggest that older adults' ability to use top-down information during search to avoid or attend to cues may be resource-limited. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contingent capture for onsets and offsets: Attentional set for perceptual transients.

Four experiments were conducted to examine whether attentional set affects the ability of visual transients (onsets and offsets) to capture attention. In the experiments, visual search for an identity-defined target was conducted. In the first 3 experiments, the target display either onset entirely or was revealed by offsetting camouflaging line segments to reveal letters. Prior to the target display, there was a noninformative cue, either an onset or an offset, at one of the potential target locations. Cues that shared the same transient feature as the target display captured attention. The lack of predictable target transients led to attentional capture by all forms of transients. The final experiments with luminance changes without offsets or onsets showed attentional capture when the luminance changes were large. The results suggest that attentional set can be broadly or narrowly tuned to detect changes in luminance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)