title: Age differences in the speed and capacity of information processing: 1. A dual-task approach.
abstract: Sixty subjects, spanning the age range from 20 to 65, performed a series of tasks designed to evaluate the effects of aging on the speed and capacity of the human information-processing system. A tracking task was performed alone and concurrently with different versions of a Sternberg memory search task that varied the degree of resource competition with the tracking task. A dichotic-listening task, a tracking-task measure of perceptual-motor speed, and a complex transcription task were also performed. The data revealed a monotonic decrease in processing speed with age but no difference in time-sharing abilities between age groups. The latter conclusion was supported by a factor analysis of the test scores, which revealed that scores on the factor defining time-sharing did not differ with age.
authors.affiliation: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
authors.forename: C D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Wickens
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Braune
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Stokes
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D001307:Auditory Perception; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D014796:Visual Perception