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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Age differences in the selection of mental sets
— the role of inhibition, stimulus ambiguity and response-set overlap | | Author(s) | Ulrich Mayr |
| Journal title | Psychology and Aging, vol 16, no 1, March 2001 |
| Pages | pp 96-109 |
| Keywords | Cognitive processes ; Mental speed ; Mental ageing ; Evaluation. |
| Annotation | Selecting between tasks leads to response time (RT) costs at switch points (local switch costs) and often to RT costs at no-switch transitions that occur in the context of a task-switching block (global set-selection costs). With trial-to-trial cuing of tasks, moderate ageing effects were obtained for global selection costs. In Experiment 1, set-specific inhibition was found to be at least as large as in old as in young adults, thus ruling out an inhibition deficit as a reason for age differences to global costs. In Experiment 2, large age group differences in global costs were limited to conditions of ambiguous stimuli and full response-set overlap. This pattern of results suggests a greater reliance on set-updating processes in older than younger adults. The role of these processes is to ensure unambiguous internal control settings when ambiguity arises from stimuli and response specifications. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-020111208 A |
| Classmark | DA: DG: D6: 4C |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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