Age Differences in Performance on Two Information-processing Tasks: Strategy Selection and Processing Efficiency

Matched groups of old and young adults were compared in two information-processing tasks and from the pattern of reaction times and from respondents' verbal reports it was possible to identify the strategies used by individuals on each task.

Abstract

Matched groups of old and young adults were compared in two information-processing tasks. In the rotated figures task the participant had to decide whether a figure displayed upright or inverted, faced forwards or backwards, held a ball in its right or left hand. In the sentence verification task the individual had to decide whether an affirmative or negative sentence was true or false as a description of a pattern. From the pattern of reaction times and from the respondents' verbal reports it was possible to identify the strategies used by individuals on each task. The numbers of participants selecting each of the different strategies were similar for old and young groups, but age differences were greater with some strategies than with others. The age difference was minimized when older adults adopted strategies that reduced the amount of processing. The older adults, however, were more disadvantaged when employing strategies that imposed greater processing demands or a heavy memory load.