A deficit in older adults' effortful selection of cued responses

J. J. Adam et al. (1998) provided evidence for an "age-related deficit in preparing 2 fingers on 2 hands, but not on 1 hand" (p. 870). Instead of having an anatomical basis, the deficit could result from the effortful processing required for individuals to select cued subsets of responses that do not coincide with left and right subgroups. The deficit also could involve either the ultimate benefit that can be attained or the time required to attain that benefit. The authors report 3 experiments (Ns = 40, 48, and 32 participants, respectively) in which they tested those distinctions by using an overlapped hand placement (participants alternated the index and middle fingers of the hands), a normal hand placement, and longer precuing intervals than were used in previous studies. The older adults were able to achieve the full precuing benefit shown by younger adults but required longer to achieve the maximal benefit for most pairs of responses. The deficit did not depend on whether the responses were from different hands, suggesting that it lies primarily in the effortful processing required for those subsets of cued responses that are not selected easily.