Long trial durations normalise the interference effect and sequential updating during healthy aging

Aisenberg, Daniela; Sapir, Ayelet; d’Avossa, Giovanni; Henik, Avishai

doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2014.10.005

Cited by 19 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…The effect of congruence on accurate RTs was greater in the older group, in accordance with the literature (Pick and Proctor, 1999; Maylor et al, 2011; Aisenberg et al, 2014). For instance, van der Lubbe and Verleger (2002) administered a Simon task in which participants had to press buttons according to the letter that was displayed either on the left or the right side of the screen, and ignore its location.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Enhanced Impulsive Action Selection in Middle-Aged Adults—Insights From an Oculomotor Simon Task

Duprez

Houvenaghel

Argaud

et al. 2016

Front. Aging Neurosci.

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Several studies have investigated the age-related impact in cognitive action control. However, to our knowledge, none of the studies have focused on the effect of moderate age on the strength of automatic activation according to the activation-suppression model. We therefore investigated the effect of moderate age on cognitive action control using an oculomotor version of the Simon task and distributional analyses. A group of middle-aged (n = 39; 57 ± 9 years) healthy adults were compared to a group of young healthy participants (n = 43; 24 ± 3 years). We first analyzed the overall impact of age on the congruence effect and then used conditional accuracy functions (CAFs) and delta plots to assess the strength of automatic activation and selective inhibition, respectively. Compared to young participants, middle-aged participants showed a greater congruence effect as well as higher rates of fast errors in conflict situations indicating an enhanced impulsive action selection. Furthermore, the overall downward slope of the congruence effect’s evolution was significantly steeper in older participants and the last slope tended to be significantly steeper. This may indicate that the middle-aged participants exerted a stronger selective inhibition. Our results suggest that middle-aged adults are more prone to impulsive action selection than young adults. Recent theories postulate that older adults might implement compensatory mechanisms to supply cognitive difficulties. This is in line with our results suggesting a potential greater selective inhibition. Overall, this study proposes that moderate aging impacts both processes of impulsive response selection and suppression underlying cognitive action control.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Enhanced Impulsive Action Selection in Middle-Aged Adults—Insights From an Oculomotor Simon Task

Duprez

Houvenaghel

Argaud

et al. 2016

Front. Aging Neurosci.

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“…showing disproportionally enlarged Simon effects in older compared to young participants (e.g., Castel, Balota, Hutchinson, Logan, & Yap, 2007;Maylor et al, 2011;van der Lubbe & Verleger, 2002), which have been taken to suggest a selective impairment in older adults' ability to inhibit location-triggered automatic motor activations. However, Aisenberg, Sapir, d'Avossa, and Henik (2014) Verhaeghen, 2011Verhaeghen, , 2014, but instead reflects difficulties at higher levels, presumably involving mental backtracking and reassessing already-processed information, which often show age-related deficits (Wasylyshyn et al, 2011;Verhaeghen, 2011Verhaeghen, , 2014.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When awareness gets in the way: Reactivation aversion effects resolve the generality/specificity paradox in sensorimotor interference tasks.

Schlaghecken¹,

Maylor²

2020

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…However, Aisenberg et al, (2014) found that older adults not only suffer a larger Simon effect, but also diminished sequential effects, suggesting that the former is a consequence of the latter. While the loss of sequential effects in older adults may still be accounted in terms of an inhibitory deficit, other aspects of Aisenberg's findings are not fully consistent with this specific hypothesis.…”

Section: The Simon Task and Agingmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…Several studies tested Simon task in older participants and found a larger Simon effect (Van Der Lubbe & Verleger, 2002;Bialystok, Craik, Klein & Viswanathan, 2004;Aisenberg et al, 2015). This age effect is mostly driven by older adults showing a disproportionate slowing when responding to incongruent targets (Aisenberg, Sapir, d'Avossa & Henik, 2014;Aisenberg et al, 2015). One possible interpretation of this finding is that inhibitory processes are impaired in aging, and therefore, the ability to suppress the irrelevant target location is diminished (Aisenberg et al, 2015).…”

Section: The Simon Task and Agingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In conclusion, inhibitory processes cannot explain the reversal of the Simon effect following an incongruent trial, while the feature binding proposal cannot explain why the duration of the ITI affects sequential effects in older adults. Aisenberg et al, (2014) proposed, instead, that age related changes in sequential effects may reflect slowed updating of the mapping between stimulus location and response. This mapping provides a general rule to transform target position into a response, for example mapping eccentric targets onto the hand either on the same or the opposite side.…”

Section: The Simon Task and Agingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Right anterior cerebellum BOLD responses reflect age related changes in Simon task sequential effects

Aisenberg

Sapir

et al. 2018

Neuropsychologia

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Participants are slower to report a feature, such as color, when the target appears on the side opposite the instructed response, than when the target appears on the same side. This finding suggests that target location, even when task-irrelevant, interferes with response selection. This effect is magnified in older adults. Lengthening the inter-trial interval, however, suffices to normalize the congruency effect in older adults, by re-establishing young-like sequential effects (Aisenberg et al., 2014). We examined the neurological correlates of age related changes by comparing BOLD signals in young and old participants performing a visual version of the Simon task. Participants reported the color of a peripheral target, by a left or right-hand keypress. Generally, BOLD responses were greater following incongruent than congruent targets. Also, they were delayed and of smaller amplitude in old than young participants. BOLD responses in visual and motor regions were also affected by the congruency of the previous target, suggesting that sequential effects may reflect remapping of stimulus location onto the hand used to make a response. Crucially, young participants showed larger BOLD responses in right anterior cerebellum to incongruent targets, when the previous target was congruent, but smaller BOLD responses to incongruent targets when the previous target was incongruent. Old participants, however, showed larger BOLD responses to congruent than incongruent targets, irrespective of the previous target congruency. We conclude that aging may interfere with the trial by trial updating of the mapping between the task-irrelevant target location and response, which takes place during the inter-trial interval in the cerebellum and underlays sequential effects in a Simon task.

show abstract

Long trial durations normalise the interference effect and sequential updating during healthy aging

Cited by 19 publications

References 74 publications

Enhanced Impulsive Action Selection in Middle-Aged Adults—Insights From an Oculomotor Simon Task

Enhanced Impulsive Action Selection in Middle-Aged Adults—Insights From an Oculomotor Simon Task

When awareness gets in the way: Reactivation aversion effects resolve the generality/specificity paradox in sensorimotor interference tasks.

Right anterior cerebellum BOLD responses reflect age related changes in Simon task sequential effects

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