Task Switching Across the Life Span: Effects of Age on General and Specific Switch Costs.

Abstract

The authors investigated age-related changes in executive control using an Internet-based task-switching experiment with 5,271 participants between the ages of 10 and 66 years. Speeded face categorization was required on the basis of gender (G) or emotion (E) in single task blocks (GGG... and EEE...) or switching blocks (GGEEGGEE...). General switch costs, the difference between switching block and single task block performance, decreased during development and then increased approximately linearly from age 18. In contrast, specific switch costs, the difference between switch trial and nonswitch trial performance in the switching block, were more stable across the same age range. These results demonstrate differential age effects in task-switching performance and provide a fine-grained analysis of switch costs from puberty to retirement.

A large-scale comparison of prospective and retrospective memory development from childhood to middle age

“…Moreover, effects emerging from such studies conducted on diverse samples under poorly controlled conditions should be particularly robust and generalizable. There is also accumulating evidence to suggest that Web-based experiments can reliably replicate laboratory findings, A Large-Scale Comparison 6 including studies of development over a similar age range as the present study (e.g., Reimers & Maylor, 2005).…”

Setting goals to switch between tasks: Effect of cue transparency on children’s cognitive flexibility.

“…To date, the few studies that have examined such switch cost indices in children led to mixed results, sometimes finding age effects on both mixing and local costs (e.g., Cepeda et al, 2001;Davidson, Amso, Anderson, & Diamond, 2006), at other times finding age effects on mixing costs only (e.g., Dibbets & Jolles, 2006;Karbach & Kray, 2007;Reimers & Maylor, 2005), and in yet other instances, finding age effects on neither mixing or local costs (e.g., Ellefson, Shapiro, & Chater, 2006). Studies differed not only in the tasks to be switched but also in many parameters that have been shown to mediate the magnitude of switch costs, such as stimulus sample size (e.g., Kray & Eppinger, 2006), proportion of switches (e.g., Monsell, 2005), and cue-stimulus interval (e.g., Monsell, 2003).…”

Age differences in response selection for pure and mixed stimulus–response mappings and tasks

“…Previous studies have found that older adults do not show a deficit in specific switch costs when the task on the current trial differs from that on the previous trial. Examples include studies by Reimers and Maylor (2005) for tasks requiring categorization of faces by gender or emotion and Eppinger et al (2007) for switching between meaning of color word or ink color in a Stroop color task. Consistent with the prior findings, the sequential analyses of the mixed conditions in the present study showed similar patterns of repetition benefits and switch costs for younger and older adults.…”