“…First, many ERP studies that have examined age-related dedifferentiation, including our own, compared responses to the same class of stimuli under attend vs. ignore conditions (Alperin et al, 2013; Hahn et al, 2011; Lorenzo-Lopez et al, 2007), but have not investigated responses to different classes of stimuli under an attend condition only. Second, almost all prior reports have limited their investigation to young adults in their 20s and young-old adults in their 60s and 70s (Alperin et al, 2013; Cabeza et al, 2002; Curran et al, 2001; Hahn et al, 2011; Looren de Jong et al, 1988; Lorenzo-Lopez et al, 2007; Vallesi, Stuss, McIntosh, & Picton, 2009), leaving open questions about when in the lifespan dedifferentiation begins and whether it continues to progress in oldold age. Third, most prior studies have not explicitly tried to match different age groups in terms of cognitive capacity or performance on the experimental task (Curran et al, 2001; Hahn et al, 2011; Looren de Jong et al, 1988), making it problematic to interpret whether differences in neural activity between groups were due to age or other factors such as executive capacity, perceived task difficulty, or task performance.…”