title: Aging, task complexity, and efficiency modes: the influence of working memory involvement on age differences in response times for verbal and visuospatial tasks.
abstract: We examined the information-processing functions (response-time x load) of younger and older adults for two verbal and one visuo-spatial task; each task was implemented in a baseline and a high-complexity condition. Heightened complexity transformed the baseline functions in either an additive or a multiplicative fashion. The processing efficiency of older adults was defined as the old-young ratio of the slopes of the load functions. Three levels of efficiency could be distinguished. The first level, with an age-related slowing factor of about 1.2, consisted of low-complexity verbal processing and additive-complexity verbal processing. The second level, associated with a slowing factor of about 1.6, consisted of a mixture of verbal-high-multiplicative-complexity processing and visuo-spatial-low-complexity processing. The third level, with a slowing factor of about 4, consisted of visuo-spatial processing of high multiplicative complexity. The results go against any common factor theory of aging. Instead, they suggest that a shift from a higher to a lower mode of efficiency is triggered by a greater degree of working memory involvement.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 13244-2340, USA. pverhaeg@psych.syr.edu
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Verhaeghen
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cerella
authors.forename: Chandramallika
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Basak
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004526:Efficiency; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D008875:Middle Aged; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D013067:Speech Perception