Aging and capacity in the same-different judgment
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Updated: Jul 18, 2026

An Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effects of Ageing on Sentence Processing
Published on: October 25, 2019
1Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0044, USA. gottlob@uky.edu
Abstract:
The same-different judgment was used in two experiments to investigate age-group differences in visual processing. Two targets next to fixation were presented; the targets on one-half of the trials were the same, and on the other half of the trials, the targets differed by color, shape, or color and shape (redundant). Response times were lower for redundant trials than for color-only and shape-only trials; this redundancy gain was greater for older observers than for young observers. Capacity measures based on the integrated hazard functions indicated that young adults, but not older adults, experienced a slowing of processing (reduction of capacity) in the redundant condition. These capacity measures may provide a method for interpreting age-group effects in the presence of overall response-time differences.
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