| |
| |
| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
Ageing and selective attention
— an issue of complexity or multiple mechanisms? | | Author(s) | Jill M Brink, Joan M McDowd |
| Journal title | The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological sciences and social sciences, vol 54B, no 1, January 1999 |
| Pages | pp P30-P33 |
| Keywords | Cognitive processes ; Mental speed ; Mental ageing ; Age groups [elderly] ; Young adults [20-25] ; Evaluation ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Previous studies have shown age-associated deficits to selective attention that vary as a function of task demands. The present study was conducted to dissociate the effect of task complexity on age-related performance differences from qualitative differences in cognitive demands. 24 young and 24 older adults were administered two versions of the Stroop test (Hartley, 1993). The Colour-Block version required identifying the colour of a box, while ignoring the name of a colour printed either above or below the box. The Colour-Word version required naming the colour of a word, while ignoring the semantic meaning of a word (a colour name). Each version of the task included a two- and four-choice condition as a manipulation of task complexity. Old and young adults performed comparably on the Colour-Block task, but older adults were significantly impaired on both conditions of the Colour-Word task, particularly in the four-choice condition. Results suggest age-related differences in the distinct attentional processes demanded by each task are not attributable to general slowing. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-990423003 A |
| Classmark | DA: DG: D6: BB: SD6: 4C: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|
|