Aging, Task Complexity, and Efficiency Modes: The Influence of Working Memory Involvement on Age Differences in Response Times for Verbal and Visuospatial Tasks
Titel:
Aging, Task Complexity, and Efficiency Modes: The Influence of Working Memory Involvement on Age Differences in Response Times for Verbal and Visuospatial Tasks
Auteur:
Verhaeghen, Paul Cerella, John Basak, Chandramallika
Verschenen in:
Aging, neuropsychology, and cognition
Paginering:
Jaargang 13 (2006) nr. 2 pagina's 254-280
Jaar:
2006-06-01
Inhoud:
We examined the information-processing functions (response-time × load) of younger and older adults for two verbal and one visuo-spatial task; each task was implemented in a baseline and a high-complexity condition. Heightened complexity transformed the baseline functions in either an additive or a multiplicative fashion. The processing efficiency of older adults was defined as the old-young ratio of the slopes of the load functions. Three levels of efficiency could be distinguished. The first level, with an age-related slowing factor of about 1.2, consisted of low-complexity verbal processing and additive-complexity verbal processing. The second level, associated with a slowing factor of about 1.6, consisted of a mixture of verbal-high-multiplicative-complexity processing and visuo-spatial-low-complexity processing. The third level, with a slowing factor of about 4, consisted of visuo-spatial processing of high multiplicative complexity. The results go against any common factor theory of aging. Instead, they suggest that a shift from a higher to a lower mode of efficiency is triggered by a greater degree of working memory involvement.