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Strategies for stimulus selective stopping in the elderly
1Cognitive Electrophysiology Laboratory: Control, Aging, Sleep, & Emotion (CASE), Department of Psychology, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan; Institute of Allied Health Sciences, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan.
Acta Psychologica
|January 9, 2017
Summary
Older adults use similar cognitive strategies as younger adults on a stop-signal task. However, older adults show deficits in reactive control, not proactive control, impacting their reaction times.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Human Development
- Psychology
Background:
- Cognitive control abilities, including reactive and proactive control, can change with age.
- Understanding age-related differences in cognitive strategies is crucial for addressing cognitive decline.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate age-related differences in behavioral reaction time (RT) patterns during a stop-signal task.
- To determine if older adults exhibit distinct reactive and proactive control processes compared to younger adults.
Main Methods:
- Employed a stop-signal task with younger (20-30 years) and older adults (61-76 years).
- Utilized Bayes factor analysis to classify individual cognitive strategies based on RT patterns.
- Compared RTs across choice RT, global stop-signal, and stimulus-selective stop-signal blocks.
Main Results:
- Older adults employed similar stimulus-selective stop-signal task strategies as younger adults, often showing interdependencies between go and stop processes.
- Older adults demonstrated impaired reactive control, evidenced by longer stop-signal RTs.
- No significant age-related differences were found in proactive control, as indicated by comparable RT differences on go trials.
Conclusions:
- Cognitive strategy utilization in a stimulus-selective stop-signal task is preserved in older adulthood.
- Age-related cognitive deficits are specific to reactive control, while proactive control remains relatively intact.
- Findings highlight the nuanced nature of age-related cognitive control changes.
