General cognitive slowing in the nonlexical domain: an experimental validation.
Older and younger adults were tested on 4 nonlexical tasks: choice reaction time, letter classification, mental rotation, and abstract matching. A positively accelerated relation was observed between older and younger adults' latencies. Consistent with general slowing, the relation observed with the same subjects in each condition was more than 3 times as precise as in a comparable meta-analysis. Further analyses compared the ability of various models to describe the present data and also to predict the data on the basis of parameters estimated from a previous meta-analysis. Compared with linear models, the information-loss and overhead models provided more accurate accounts of general cognitive slowing in the nonlexical domain.
Hale
S
S
Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63130-4899.
Lima
S D
SD
Myerson
J
J
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D003210:Concept Formation; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time