Age differences in overlapping-task performance: Evidence for efficient parallel processing in older adults.

Allen, Philip A.; Lien, Mei-Ching; Murphy, Martin D.; Sanders, Raymond E.; Judge, Katherine S.; McCann, Robert S.

doi:10.1037/0882-7974.17.3.505

Cited by 66 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 51 publications

(163 reference statements)

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“…For example, Allen, Lien, et al (2002) provided evidence of greater expertise in the processing of semantic concepts with age, since the performance of older adults suggested superior parallel processing compared with that of younger adults in a task involving lexical access. Also, Verhaeghen (2003) carried out a meta-analysis of vocabulary scores on studies of healthy younger and older samples.…”

Section: Age Group Comparisonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The effect of higher levels of saliency for semantic concepts may normally be manifested within any particular cohort as faster or more accurate processing. Certainly, in semantic tasks, such as lexical decision and category verification, there have been reports of greater accuracy for older adults than for younger adults (e.g., Allen, Lien, et al, 2002;Morrow, 2001). However, such age differences affected by saliency will be more difficult to identify in the comparison of response times.…”

Section: Implications and Summarymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The representation of ontological category concepts as affected by healthy aging: Normative data and theoretical implications

Morrow

Duffy

2005

Behavior Research Methods

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Attributes associated with concept representations, such as familiarity, typicality, and age of acquisition, have been shown to be important influences on lexical-semantic processing. In most previous studies of healthy and pathological aging, these attributes are not equated for younger and older adults separately on the stimuli used. In this study, normative data were collected to test whether there exist any age differences in these attributes. The results demonstrate that the ratings given by younger and older adults on natural and manmade category items correlated positively. However, age differences were also apparent, whereby older adults provided higher ratings overall than younger adults. Suggestions and hypotheses are presented to explain this pattern of age differences, which relate to how category concepts may be represented by healthy younger and older adults. Also, the possible implications for these differential age ratings on lexical-semantic processing are discussed. The age differences apparent in this study demonstrate the need to consider age-appropriate normative ratings in the selection of stimuli for use in lexical-semantic processing studies of aging, and the normative data presented provide a means of equating category stimuli. The complete list of all the means is available at www.psychonomic.org/archive.

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Section: Age Group Comparisonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implications and Summarymentioning

confidence: 99%

The representation of ontological category concepts as affected by healthy aging: Normative data and theoretical implications

Morrow

Duffy

2005

Behavior Research Methods

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“…Parallel processing of this sort could reduce the size of the PRP effect. Allen et al (2002) followed by Lien et al (2006) proposed a measure of general savings that reflected the extent to which any parallel processing is being carried out in a dual-task situation. The equation for general savings due to parallel processing is…”

Section: Parallel Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Backward compatibility effects in younger and older adults

Hartley

Maquestiaux

Festini

et al. 2016

Atten Percept Psychophys

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In many dual-task situations, responses to the second of two tasks are slowed when the time between tasks is short. The response-selection bottleneck model of dual-task performance accounts for this phenomenon by assuming that central processing of the second task is blocked by a bottleneck until central processing of Task 1 is complete. This assumption could be called into question if it could be demonstrated that the response to Task 2 affected the central processing of Task 1, a backward response compatibility effect. Such effects are well-established in younger adults. Backward compatibility effects in older (as well as younger) adults were explored in two experiments. The first experiment found clear backward response compatibility effects for younger adults but no evidence of them for older adults. The second experiment explored backward stimulus compatibility and found similar effects in both younger and older adults. Evidence possibly consistent with some pre-bottleneck processing of Task 2 central stages also was found in the second experiment in both age groups. For younger adults, the results provide further evidence falsifying the claim of an immutable response selection bottleneck. For older adults, the evidence suggested that Task 2 affects Task 1 when there is stimulus compatibility but not when there is response compatibility. Under most circumstances, people cannot perform two tasks at exactly the same time without interference, even when both tasks are very simple. As the temporal overlap between the two tasks increases, the time to perform the second task increases monotonically. Conversely, in many situations for each additional millisecond that the stimulus of the second task is delayed after the onset of the stimulus of the first task (the stimulus onset asynchrony or SOA), the reaction time (RT) to the second task drops by 1 ms. By contrast, the RT to the first task is largely unaffected by SOA. The slowing of the second task at short SOAs often is called the psychological refractory period (PRP) effect by analogy with the time after firing when a neuron is unresponsive to further input (Telford, 1931;Vince, 1948;Welford, 1952). The PRP effect has been replicated in a large number of experiments, thus deserving the status of one of the few laws of contemporary cognitive psychology. Pashler (1994Pashler ( , 1998 provides reviews and overviews of the research and theory (also see Spence, 2008;Tombu & Jolicoeur, 2005).The most successful account of the PRP effect is the response-selection bottleneck (RSB) model, the principal tenet of which is that central processing can be performed for one and only one task at any particular time. Central processing of one of the tasks must be delayed until central processing of the other task is complete. This leads to the prediction that each millisecond by which the arrival of the second task is delayed will be 1 ms that it will not have to wait for the central processing mechanism to become free. Central processing involves processes of mapping...

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“…For example, the performance costs associated with the executive process of switching between different tasks (i.e., global task switching) are higher for older adults than for younger adults, beyond what would be expected on the basis of generalized age-related slowing, whereas the costs of selecting or inhibiting specific features within a task (local task switching) are more consistent with a generalized slowing model (Mayr & Liebscher, 2001;Salthouse & Miles, 2002;Verhaeghen & Cerella, 2002; but cf. Allen et al, 2002).…”

Section: Age-related Change In Top-down Attentional Guidancementioning

confidence: 99%

Adult Age Differences in the Implicit and Explicit Components of Top-Down Attentional Guidance During Visual Search.

Madden¹,

Whiting²,

Spaniol³

et al. 2005

Psychology and Aging

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Two experiments investigated adult age differences in the explicit (knowledge-based) and implicit (repetition priming) components of top-down attentional guidance during discrimination of a target singleton. Experiment 1 demonstrated an additional contribution of explicit top-down attention, relative to the implicit effect of repetition priming, which was similar in magnitude for younger and older adults. Experiment 2 examined repetition priming of target activation and distractor inhibition independently. The additional contribution of explicit top-down attention, relative to the repetition priming of distractor inhibition, was greater for older adults than for younger adults. The results suggest that some forms of top-down attentional control are preserved as a function of adult age and may operate in a compensatory manner. Keywordsaging; selective attention; reaction time; perception; cognition Identifying a target item in a visual display involves guiding attention to that item and determining that it possesses the features sufficient for a detection response. Attentional guidance can be either top-down, in the sense of depending primarily on the observer's goals and knowledge of the task structure, or bottom-up, in the sense of being relatively more determined by the local properties of the visual display (Wolfe, 1998;Yantis, 1998). Top-down attention is essential in complex search tasks, as when, for example, the target is a conjunction of different features occurring in the distractors (e.g., finding a T among Ls and Fs). In this case, one must know what one is looking for. In contrast, when the target differs from the distractors in a unique feature (e.g., a T among Os), the target pops out of the display visually in a bottom-up (stimulus-driven) manner.Most forms of visual search represent the combined influence of top-down and bottom-up attentional processing, and even in relatively simple tasks there can be a contribution of topdown attention. Bravo and Nakayama (1992) demonstrated a top-down effect during detection and discrimination of a color singleton. The target, for example, could be a red diamond among green diamond distractors, with the task being the determination of whether the left or right side of the target was cut off. These authors found that the unique color of the singleton provided

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Age differences in overlapping-task performance: Evidence for efficient parallel processing in older adults.

Cited by 66 publications

References 51 publications

The representation of ontological category concepts as affected by healthy aging: Normative data and theoretical implications

The representation of ontological category concepts as affected by healthy aging: Normative data and theoretical implications

Backward compatibility effects in younger and older adults

Adult Age Differences in the Implicit and Explicit Components of Top-Down Attentional Guidance During Visual Search.

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