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Effects of Age and Stimulus Repetition on Two-Choice Reaction Time
Abstract
Subjects released 1 key with the right hand upon presentation of a red light and another with the left hand when a green light was presented. Each stimulus occurred an equal number of times in a sequence of 40 trials, but the probability that it would do so twice in succession was only .25. The subjects were male volunteers who ranged in age from the 20s through the 70s. Mean response latency increased with age, although variability did not. Stimulus alternations were responded to more rapidly than repetitions by subjects in all age groups, a result consistent with an expectancy theory of choice reaction time. A detailed analysis of the frequency distributions of reaction times suggests that the older individuals' longer latencies reflect impaired psychomotor rather than decision making efficiency.
... Although many investigations find significant age effect on RT IIV, the magnitude of the effect varies between studies. There are also reports of there being no significant age effects in RT IIV [16], [17]. Therefore, it is desirable to investigate the issue systematically and to attempt to quantify the differences between older and younger individuals as well as to investigate potential sources of heterogeneity in the findings of various investigators. ...
... Many studies that have investigated age effects on RT IIV have found greater levels of variability in older than younger individuals [2], [3]. However, some have not found a significant age effect on RT IIV [16]. Because RT can be obtained from a number of different tasks, it is expected that some of the differences between study findings may be due to differences in the tasks and procedures adopted by different studies. ...
Intra-individual variability in reaction time (RT IIV) is considered to be an index of central nervous system functioning. Such variability is elevated in neurodegenerative diseases or following traumatic brain injury. It has also been suggested to increase with age in healthy ageing.
To investigate and quantify age differences in RT IIV in healthy ageing; to examine the effect of different tasks and procedures; to compare raw and mean-adjusted measures of RT IIV.
FOUR ELECTRONIC DATABASES: PsycINFO, Medline, Web of Science and EMBASE, and hand searching of reference lists of relevant studies. STUDY ELIGIBILITY: English language journal articles, books or book chapters, containing quantitative empirical data on simple and/or choice RT IIV. Samples had to include younger (under 60 years) and older (60 years and above) human adults. STUDY APPRAISAL AND SYNTHESIS: Studies were evaluated in terms of sample representativeness and data treatment. Relevant data were extracted, using a specially-designed form, from the published report or obtained directly from the study authors. Age-group differences in raw and RT-mean-adjusted measures of simple and choice RT IIV were quantified using random effects meta-analyses.
Older adults (60+ years) had greater RT IIV than younger (20-39) and middle-aged (40-59) adults. Age effects were larger in choice RT tasks than in simple RT tasks. For all measures of RT IIV, effect sizes were larger for the comparisons between older and younger adults than between older and middle-aged adults, indicating that the age-related increases in RT IIV are not limited to old age. Effect sizes were also larger for raw than for RT-mean-adjusted RT IIV measures.
RT IIV is greater among older adults. Some (but not all) of the age-related increases in RT IIV are accounted for by the increased RT means.
... Repetition effects are usually found with short RSIs (about 0.5 s or less), when the delay between successive stimuli should not be greater than the residual neural activation. Alternation effectsthat is, shorter RTs when a stimulus differs from the preceding oneare mostly found when RSIs or inter-stimulus intervals are long, which means that these effects can not be explained in terms of residual activation (Fozard, Thomas, and Waugh, 1976;Waugh, Fozard, Talland, and Erwin, 1973). ...
The purpose of the present thesis is to explicate some difficulties with regard to the fundamentals of human performance theory and to provide some improve¬ments for this theory. In brief, the issue may be summarized as a lack of conceptual depth needed to acquire accumulating knowledge concerning the underlying mechanisms determining performance in complex psychomotor tasks and the performance deteriorations of older adults in these tasks.
This thesis consists of two parts. Part One focusses on the state of-the art of multiple task performance theory and endeavors to develop foundations for a theoretical framework which better incorporates training effects and current knowledge concerning brain functioning. The objective of Chapter 2 is to review the main contemporary theories concerning multiple task performance. In Chapter 3, these theories will be critically evaluated. In Chapter 4, a new framework is proposed, starting from existing knowledge concerning brain functioning and human performance in dual tasks. The final chapter of Part One places this theory development in an aging related perspective and outlines the rationale of the experiments. These experiments are described in more detail in the subsequent chapters, which make up Part Two of this study. Both parts contain their own list of references.
http://publications.tno.nl/publication/101053/4mf7KI/korteling-1994-multiple-diss.pdf
... Repetition effects are usually found with short RSIs (about 0.5 s or less), when the delay between successive stimuli should not be greater than the residual neural activation. Alternation effects-that is, shorter RTs when a stimulus differs from the preceding one-are mostly found when RSIs or interstimulus intervals are long, which means that these effects cannot be explained in terms of residual activation (Fozard, Thomas, and Waugh, 1976;Waugh, Fozard, Talland, and Erwin, 1973). ...
Three experiments including reaction time (RT) tasks and driving tasks were conducted to identify variables that may be sensitive to the effects of brain damage or aging and to determine how RT tasks relate to driving performance. In Experiment 1 mean RTs of the brain-damaged and older subjects disproportionately increased relative to those of controls, with increasing difference between subsequent compound stimuli. In Experiment 2 response accuracy of brain-damaged subjects deteriorated more than that of controls when the similarity of a task to actual driving increased. In Experiment 3 brain-damaged patients were slower and less accurate than the controls on all measures of a platoon car-following task, whereas the older subjects were only less accurate. Compared with those of the controls, brake RTs of neither the older subjects nor the patients were disproportionately affected by increasing task load. Performance on the platoon driving task could be successfully predicted by a laboratory RT task on time estimation only for the brain-damaged subjects.
... Rabbitt concludes that no age-related changes in priming effects occur when a physically identical stimulus is repeated, but that the elderly do not show priming effects when the relation between successive stimuli is based on information stored in memory (e.g., expectation or sharing the same name). Older adults, however, did show faster responses to expected stimuli in a simple binary-choice reaction-time task (Fozard, Thomas, & Waugh, 1976;Waugh, Fozard, Talland, & Erwin, 1973). The discrepancy between this and Rabbitt's results may be related to the longer interval between stimuli in the Fozard et al. and Waugh et al. studies, which would be critical if older adults require more time to shift attention to expected stimuli. ...
A review of the literature demonstrates that production deficiency hypotheses are unable to account fully for the fact that older adults perform more poorly on memory tasks than young adults. The possibility is explored that age-related differences are due to changes in fundamental processes involved in retrieval of information from memory, namely, (a) utilization of contextual information and (b) activation processes occurring in semantic memory. Automatic as well as intentional processes are examined. (5¼ p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Changes in cognitive processes, personality, and physiological functioning associated with normative aging can affect decision-making capabilities, particularly under conditions of situational urgency. Those aspects of decision environments most likely to precipitate age-related performance decrements are discussed in terms of their potential for remedial human engineering.
Reported are preliminary findings from analyses of cross-sectional and longitudinal reaction time data collected on 865 male and 453 female volunteers who ranged in age from 20 to 96 years. Evident in both simple and disjunctive reaction time measures was a consistent slowing with age. In nearly all cases, males were faster than females but gender differences were negligible for the simple reaction time (SRT) compared to disjunctive reaction time (DRT). Repeated testing within subjects over 2–8 years also showed age-related slowing across decades. Cross-sectional studies have been criticized for overestimating the actual age-related slowing found in longitudinal analysis. However, this was not the case in the present research. Similar effects were observed in analyses of data from all subjects on their first visit (n = 1318 subjects) compared to data from all subjects over all of their visits (n = 3855 subject visits) compared to data from only those subjects across decades who were tested repeatedly over at least 8 years (n = 314 subjects X 5 visits = 1570 subject visits). Findings from this research have human factors implications for task design, personnel selection, performance prediction, accident analysis, human tests and measurements, and demographic norms, to mention a few.
Older subjects are compared to younger subjects on four reaction time tasks. Utilizing a model proposed by Teichner and Krebs (1974), four simple tasks were evolved to estimate: simple reaction time, response selection, stimulus-response translation, and stimulus-stimulus translation. Results indicated that the time difference found between the elderly and young subjects on a simple RT task was relatively equivalent to the time differences found on tasks isolating the components of response selection and stimulus-response translation. However, on a task necessitating a stimulus-stimulus translation the elderly showed a significantly greater increment in RT than found on the previous three tasks. It was concluded that the elderly have no relative difficulty making judgments in terms of the number of response choices and when the information for a judgment has direct relevance to the response choice. When the information for a judgment does not have direct relevance to the decision, it is difficult for elderly persons to use this information adequately.
From 1973 to 1989, 1318 subjects ranging in age from 20 to 96 years completed auditory reaction time (RT) tasks as part of the extensive test battery of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. In addition to central tendency, higher moments of reaction time frequency distributions (variability and skewness) were analyzed to (1) determine changes in the shape of the frequency distribution not revealed by analysis of central tendency alone, which could explain a portion of the slowing effect, and (2) examine differences in cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches. Cross-sectional results revealed significant age increases for median simple reaction time (SRT) and median disjunctive reaction time (DRT), as well as SRT and DRT variance. Males were significantly faster and less variable than females for both SRT and DRT tasks. SRT distributions were much more positively skewed than DRT distributions, and DRT distributions became more positively skewed with age. Increased variability appears to account for a sizable portion of the age-related performance slowing. Longitudinal analyses produced slightly different results, the most distinctive being the fading of age and sex differences over longer periods of time for median RT, variance, and skewness. Findings from this research have human factors implications for task design, personnel selection, accident analysis, and demographic norms.
Forty‐three subjects aged 50 and over were tested on a Sternberg recognition‐memory task to explore the relative effects of depression and altered brain function on short‐term memory in later life. Organic, depressed, and control subgroups were compared on accuracy and speed of response. Speed‐of‐memory scanning was differentiated from other speed‐of‐response components; separate estimates of memory efficiency and subjective response criteria were calculated from accuracy data by signal‐detection methods. Organic subjects performed much less accurately and quickly than others, showing great variability of response speeds. Depressed subjects performed less accurately and quickly than controls, particularly on negative trials, but did not differ in rate of memory scanning. Depression was associated with poorer memory efficiency and laxer response criteria (greater tolerance for false‐positive errors). Slower and less accurate responding was also associated with a poorer educational background. Many performance differences were best accounted for by the additive effects of depression and educational background, rather than by either variable individually. The association of laxer criteria with depression alone, however, was discussed in terms of a possible acquiescent response bias in depression.
Young adults solved a problem in which hobbits and orcs had to be transported across a river. In Expt I, a Part-Whole group of subjects solved the problem starting at a different state in the middle and then were given the entire problem. Comparison with a Control group indicated that the initial practice of the Part-Whole group did not facilitate their later performance on the same problem segment, but did facilitate performance in a different portion of the problem. In Expt II, some subjects were given feedback halfway through the problem that they were on the right track. Results gave some support to the notion that a possible difficulty in the problem is the subject's belief that he must have entered a blind alley in the search space. However, other difficulties were also involved. Inferences from several different dependent performance variables, the transfer results, and subjects' comments consistently suggested that subjects solving this problem needed to undergo a number of cognitive changes (3–4) that was smaller than the minimum number of external moves required to solve the problem (11).
To help identify the loci of age-related slowing of cognitive processing, the effects of stimulus-response (S-R) incompatibility and stimulus degradation on P3 latency and reaction time (RT) were assessed in ten young and ten elderly women. Subjects saw the words right, left, RIGHT, or LEFT in tasks which required responses to 1.(1) the meaning of the word (WORD)2.(2) its case (CASE) and3.(3) both (CASE/WORD).
Each task was tested with regular and degraded stimuli. On half the trials, the stimulus and response were incompatible. Although RTs and P3s of elderly subjects were slower, especially RTs in CASE/WORD, stimulus degradation and S-R incompatibility did not differentially affect the two groups, suggesting that cognitive processing of older subjects is not especially prolonged in perceptual and response-related stages. For both groups RTs and P3s were task dependent and were prolonged by degradation and S-R incompatibility. Incompatibility delayed RTs in WORD and CASE/WORD but P3s in WORD only. Thus, young and elderly subjects show qualitatively similar psychophysiological and behavioral indicators of processing speed.
Cued recall of preteens, young adults, and senior adults (480 Ss) was compared under 7 conditions of practice. (Preteens were 11–12 yrs old; young adults were college students; senior adults had a mean age of 47.5 yrs.) The independent variable was the number of items in the list which began with the same letter of the alphabet; the number of items per alphabetic cue was 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, or 12. The interaction between age and the number of items per cue was not significant, thus permitting the inference that retrieval failure due to the number of items per cue was invariant with age. This result is discussed in terms of cue overload, and the suggestion is offered that cue overload may result from information lost when memory traces carrying the same retrieval information interact and are recoded. Further analyses pursued the nature and locus of the items not recalled by preteens and senior adults, and the judgment is made that the retrieval failure in these 2 age groups, although comparable in quantity, is probably different in quality. Also reported is the finding that, under free-recall conditions, senior adults were able to recall as well as young adults, and this result was related to the greater opportunity for meaningful organization in free recall than in cued-alphabetic recall. (French summary) (30 ref)
Abrahams, J. P. Health status as a variable in aging research. Experimental Aging Research, 1976, 2, (2), 63-71. Findings from several studies bearing on the association between disease and age-associated behavior changes were briefly reviewed in order to stress the need for health assessment in gerontological psychology research. Despite the evidence favoring the need for health assessment such procedures have generally not been undertaken. Implications for experimental doing research were discussed.
Ever since the pioneering days of experimental psychology in the second half of the last century, reaction times have been studied in the attempt to discover and measure the mental events that intervene between the receipt of stimuli by the sense organs and the overt responses to them. If it takes longer to react under some conditions than others, then it is a fair question to ask how the difference of time is spent. Today, reaction times are probably the most powerful method that we have of relating so-called mental events to physical measures. They have proved to fit theories of central processing in the brain with astonishing precision in a number of cases and they provide a base on which to build understanding of the timing of movement and of times taken by complex activities. Reaction times are of obvious importance in the study of aging because one of the most pervasive and striking of the changes that come with age is the slowing of performance.
Experimental psychological research on performance in relation to age is outlined to show how aims, methods and interests have developed between the pioneering days of the 1940s and the present time. More detailed consideration is then given to the actual and potential applications to studies of aging of the quantitative methods of Information and Signal Detection Theories, and to the importance of taking account not only of correct performance but of the frequency and nature of errors if age changes are to be fully understood. Research in relation to age on continued performance is discussed, including short-term serial effects and the longer terms effects of fatigue, learning and practice, and the need for further research in these areas is emphasised. Guiding principles for future psychological research on aging are briefly urged.
Choice reaction time (CRT) was measured for young and elderly adults when both the stimulus and the response, or only the response, or neither the stimulus nor the response had been correctly predicted by the subject. The older adult's CRT exceeded the younger one's by a constant amount in all cases. Implications for the "uncertainty effect" in aging--the disproportionate increase with age of CRT relative to simple reaction time--are discussed.
We used H(2)15O positron emission tomography (PET) to measure age-related changes in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) during a verbal recognition memory task. Twelve young adults (20 to 29 years) and 12 older adults (62 to 79 years) participated. Separate PET scans were conducted during Encoding, Baseline, and Retrieval conditions. Each of the conditions involved viewing a series of 64 words and making a two-choice response manually. The complete reaction time (RT) distributions in each task condition were characterized in terms of an ex-Gaussian model (convolution of exponential and Gaussian functions). Parameter estimates were obtained for the mean of the exponential component (tau), representing a task-specific decision process and the mean of the Gaussian component (mu) representing residual sensory coding and response processes. Independently of age group, both tau and mu were higher in the Encoding and Retrieval conditions than in the Baseline condition, and tau was higher during Retrieval than during Encoding. Age-related slowing in task performance was evident primarily in mu. For young adults, rCBF activation in the right prefrontal cortex, in the Retrieval condition, was correlated positively with mu but not with tau. For older adults, rCBF changes (both increases and decreases) in several cortical regions were correlated with both mu and tau. The data suggest that the attentional demands of this task are relatively greater for older adults and consequently lead to the recruitment of additional neural systems during task performance.
In the current study we examined the generalized slowing hypothesis on the mechanisms underlying sequential effects in serial two-choice reaction time tasks. For young adults, sequential effects of conditions with a high and a low stimulus presentation rate respectively pointed to an automatic and an expectancy mechanism. Older adults' low presentation rate data corroborated the general slowing hypothesis for expectancy, whereas the high presentation rate results did not. The observation of a differential influence of age on the automatic and the expectancy mechanism poses a problem for notions assuming that higher level processes are more vulnerable to advancing age than lower level processes.
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