Identifying the nature of impairment in planning ability with normal aging

Planning ability, a subset of executive functioning, has been shown to decline with normal aging. However, the exact nature of this decline has yet to be adequately examined. In this study, 50 younger adults and 50 older adults completed a map task designed to tease apart the formulation and execution stages of planning. Participants were tasked with reading a map layout of a university apartment and planning an efficient route to complete several tasks. There were two conditions, aid and no-aid. During the formulation stage, participants wrote out their plan for later task completion. In the execution stage, half of the participants were instructed to utilize their written aid during task completion while the other half completed tasks without the use of their aid. Older adults performed more poorly than younger adults during both the formulation and execution stages on measures of accuracy and efficiency. There was no effect of using the aid during execution. Thus, using an open-ended planning task involving real-world stimuli, we found age-related deficits in planning ability associated with both the formulation and execution components, and not exclusively with formulation. We also found that both groups successfully updated and adjusted their formulated plans during execution.