Converging Evidence for Domain-Specific Slowing From Multiple Nonlexical Tasks and Multiple Analytic Methods

Older and young adults were tested on eight nonlexical tasks that overlapped extensively in complexity: disjunctive choice reaction time, line-length discrimination, letter classification, shape classification, mental rotation, visual search, abstract matching, and mental paper-folding. Performance...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences Psychological sciences and social sciences, 1995-07, Vol.50B (4), p.P202-P211
Main Authors: Hale, Sandra, Myerson, Joel, Faust, Mark, Fristoe, Nathanael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Aged
Aging & longevity
Aging - physiology
Analysis of Variance
Cognition & reasoning
Cognition - physiology
Data Interpretation, Statistical
Humans
Linear Models
Reaction Time
Research Design
Time Factors
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Summary:Older and young adults were tested on eight nonlexical tasks that overlapped extensively in complexity: disjunctive choice reaction time, line-length discrimination, letter classification, shape classification, mental rotation, visual search, abstract matching, and mental paper-folding. Performance on the first seven tasks was associated with equivalently low error rates in both groups, making it possible to directly compare their response times (RTs) on these tasks. Consistent with domain-specific slowing, the relationship between the RTs of the older adults and the RTs of the young adults was well described by a task-independent mathematical (Brinley) function. Evidence from this analysis and from analyses based on task-specific information-processing models leads to similar conclusions and provides converging support for general cognitive slowing in the nonlexical domain.
ISSN:1079-5014
1758-5368
DOI:10.1093/geronb/50B.4.P202