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A Method for Investigating Age-related Differences in the Functional Connectivity of Cognitive Control Networks Associated with Dimensional Change Card Sort Performance

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Age-related differences in switching between cognitive tasks: does internal control ability decline with age?

Mei-Ching Lien¹, Eric Ruthruff, David Kuhns

¹Department of Psychology, Oregon State University, Corvalis, OR 97331, USA. mei.lien@oregonstate.edu

Psychology and Aging

|June 25, 2008

Summary

Older adults do not show reduced costs for unexpected tasks, contrary to predictions. While they struggle with stimuli linked to multiple tasks, this difficulty doesn't stem from relying more on automatic responses.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Neuroscience of Aging

Background:

Older adults may establish weaker task sets, leading to greater reliance on stimulus-triggered task activation.
This could impair performance on task switches, especially with competing task-stimulus associations.

Purpose of the Study:

To test if older adults rely more on stimulus-triggered task activation compared to younger adults.
To investigate age-related differences in task switching, preparation, and stimulus control.

Main Methods:

Three experiments were conducted using task-switching paradigms with univalent/bivalent stimuli and task-cueing.
Participants included older and younger adults performing tasks with varying levels of preparation and stimulus complexity.

Main Results:

Older adults did not exhibit smaller expectancy costs on unexpected tasks.
Significant age effects were found for bivalence costs and mixing costs, indicating difficulties with stimuli associated with multiple tasks.
No disproportionate age effects on switch costs were observed.

Conclusions:

Older adults experience challenges with stimuli linked to multiple active tasks.
Evidence does not support the hypothesis that this difficulty arises specifically from increased reliance on bottom-up (stimulus-triggered) activation over top-down (deliberate) preparation.