title: Children are not like older adults: a diffusion model analysis of developmental changes in speeded responses.
abstract: Children (n = 130; M(age) = 8.51-15.68 years) and college-aged adults (n = 72; M(age) = 20.50 years) completed numerosity discrimination and lexical decision tasks. Children produced longer response times (RTs) than adults. R. Ratcliff's (1978) diffusion model, which divides processing into components (e.g., quality of evidence, decision criteria settings, nondecision time), was fit to the accuracy and RT distribution data. Differences in all components were responsible for slowing in children in these tasks. Children extract lower quality evidence than college-aged adults, unlike older adults who extract a similar quality of evidence as college-aged adults. Thus, processing components responsible for changes in RTs at the beginning of the life span are somewhat different from those responsible for changes occurring with healthy aging.
authors.affiliation: The Ohio State University, Department of Psychology, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. ratcliff.22@osu.edu
authors.forename: Roger
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ratcliff
authors.forename: Jessica
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Love
authors.forename: Clarissa A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Thompson
authors.forename: John E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Opfer
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D003657:Decision Making; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D012858:Size Perception; D055815:Young Adult