Older adults have been argued to have impoverished inhibitory control compared to younger adults. However, these effects of age may depend on processing speed and their manifestation may furthermore depend on the type of inhibitory control task that is used. We present two experiments that examine age effects on inhibition across three tasks: a Simon arrow, static flanker and motion flanker task. The results showed overall slower reaction times (RTs) for older adults on all three tasks. However, effects of age on inhibition costs were only found for the Simon task, but not for the two flanker tasks. The motion flanker task furthermore showed an effect of baseline processing speed on the relation between age and inhibition costs. Older adults with slower baseline responses showed smaller inhibition costs, suggesting they were affected less by the flanker items than faster older adults. These findings suggest that effects of age on inhibition are task dependent and can be modulated by task-specific features such as the type of interference, type of stimuli and processing speed.
AndrésP.GuerriniC.PhillipsL. H.PerfectT. J. (2008). Differential effects of aging on executive and automatic inhibition. Developmental Neuropsychology, 33, 101–123.
2.
BillinoJ.BremmerF.GegenfurtnerK. R. (2008). Differential aging of motion processing mechanisms: Evidence against general perceptual decline. Vision Research, 48, 1254–1261.
3.
BurleB.SpieserL.ServantM.HasbroucqT. (2014). Distributional reaction time properties in the Eriksen task: Marked differences or hidden similarities with the Simon task?Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21, 1003–1010.
4.
BurleB.van den WildenbergW.RidderinkhofK. R. (2005). Dynamics of facilitation and interference in cue-priming and Simon tasks. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 17, 619–641.
5.
CastelA. D.BalotaD. A.HutchisonK. A.LoganJ. M.YapM. J. (2007). Spatial attention and response control in healthy younger and older adults and individuals with Alzheimer’s disease: Evidence for disproportionate selection impairments in the Simon task. Neuropsychology, 21(2), 170–182.
6.
ColcombeS. J.KramerA. F.EricksonK. I.ScalfP. (2005). The implications of cortical recruitment and brain morphology for individual differences in inhibitory function in aging humans. Psychology and Aging, 20, 363–375.
7.
ColletteF.SchmidtC.ScherrerC.AdamS.SalmonE. (2009). Specificity of inhibitory deficits in normal aging and Alzheimer’s disease. Neurobiology of Aging, 30, 875–889.
8.
ConnellyS. L.HasherL. (1993). Aging and the inhibition of spatial location. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 19, 1238–1250.
9.
EgnerT.HirschJ. (2005). Cognitive control mechanisms resolve conflict through cortical amplification of task-relevant information. Nature Neuroscience, 8, 1784–1790.
10.
FaustM. E.BalotaD. A.SpielerD. H.FerraroF. R. (1999). Individual differences in information-processing rate and amount: Implications for group differences in response latency. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 777–799.
11.
Fernandez-DuqueD.BlackS. E. (2006). Attentional networks in normal aging and Alzheimer’s disease. Neuropsychology, 20(2), 133–143.
12.
FriedmanN. P.MiyakeA. (2004). The relations among inhibition and interference control functions: A latent-variable analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 101–135.
13.
GambozN.ZamarianS.CavalleroC. (2010). Age-related differences in the attention network test (ANT). Experimental Aging Research, 36, 287–305.
14.
GermainS.ColletteF. (2008). Dissociation of perceptual and motor inhibitory processes in young and elderly participants using the Simon task. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 14, 1014–1021.
15.
HasherL.ZacksR. T. (1988). Working memory, comprehension, and aging: A review and a new view. In BowerG. H. (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 22, pp. 193–225). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
16.
HsiehS.FangW. (2012). Elderly adults through compensatory responses can be just as capable as young adults in inhibiting the flanker influence. Biological Psychology, 90, 113–126.
17.
HsiehS.LiangY. C.TsaiY. C. (2012). Do age-related changes contribute to the flanker effect?Clinical Neurophysiology, 123, 960–972.
18.
HsiehS.SchubertS.HoonC.MioshiE.HodgesJ. R. (2013). Validation of the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination III in frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, 36, 242–250.
19.
JenningsJ. M.DagenbachD.EngleC. M.FunkeL. J. (2007). Age-related changes and the attention network task: An examination of alerting, orienting, and executive function. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 14, 353–369.
20.
JohnsonC. A.AdamsA. J.LewisR. A. (1989). Evidence for a neural basis of age-related visual field loss in normal observers. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, 30, 2056–2064.
21.
Juncos-RabadánO.PereiroA. X.FacalD. (2008). Cognitive interference and aging: Insights from a spatial stimulus–response consistency task. Acta Psychologica, 127, 237–246.
22.
KawaiN.Kubo-KawaiN.KuboK.TerazawaT.MasatakaN. (2012). Distinct aging effects for two types of inhibition in older adults: A near-infrared spectroscopy study on the Simon task and the flanker task. NeuroReport, 23, 819–824.
23.
KramerA. F.HumphreyD. G.LarishJ. F.LoganG. D.StrayerD. L. (1994). Aging and inhibition: Beyond a unitary view of inhibitory processing in attention. Psychology and Aging, 9, 491–512.
24.
Lange-MaleckiB.TreueS. (2012). A flanker effect for moving visual stimuli. Vision Research, 62, 134–138.
25.
MathewsonK. J.DywanJ.SegalowitzS. J. (2005). Brain bases of error-related ERPs as influenced by age and task. Biological Psychology, 70, 88–104.
26.
McCraeC. S.AbramsR. A. (2001). Age-related differences in object-and location-based inhibition of return of attention. Psychology and Aging, 16, 437–449.
27.
MoreyR. D.RouderJ. N. (2014). BayesFactor: Computation of Bayes factors for common designs (R package version 0.9.7).
28.
MullaneJ. C.CorkumP. V.KleinR. M.McLaughlinE. (2009). Interference control in children with and without ADHD: A systematic review of Flanker and Simon task performance. Child Neuropsychology, 15, 321–342.
29.
NassauerK. W.HalperinJ. M. (2003). Dissociation of perceptual and motor inhibition processes through the use of novel computerized conflict tasks. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 9, 25–30.
30.
PaapK. R.GreenbergZ. I. (2013). There is no coherent evidence for a bilingual advantage in executive processing. Cognitive Psychology, 66, 232–258.
31.
PeirceJ. W. (2007). PsychoPy – Psychophysics software in Python. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 162, 8–13.
32.
ProctorR. W.PickD. F.VuK. P. L.AndersonR. E. (2005). The enhanced Simon effect for older adults is reduced when the irrelevant location information is conveyed by an accessory stimulus. Acta Psychologica, 119, 21–40.
33.
RatcliffR.ThaparA.GomezP.McKoonG. (2004). A diffusion model analysis of the effects of aging in the lexical-decision task. Psychology and Aging, 19, 278–289.
34.
RidderinkhofK. R.van den WildenbergW. P.WijnenJ.BurleB. (2004). Response inhibition in conflict tasks is revealed in delta plots. In PosnerM. I. (Ed.), Cognitive neuroscience of attention (pp. 369–377). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
35.
RouderJ. N.MoreyR. D.SpeckmanP. L.ProvinceJ. M. (2012). Default Bayes factors for ANOVA designs. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 56, 356–374.
36.
ScarmeasN.ZarahnE.AndersonK. E.HabeckC. G.HiltonJ.FlynnJ.. . . MoellerJ. R. (2003). Association of life activities with cerebral blood flow in Alzheimer disease: Implications for the cognitive reserve hypothesis. Archives of Neurology, 60, 359–365.
37.
SchuchS. (2016). Task inhibition and response inhibition in older vs. Younger adults: A diffusion model analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1722.
38.
ShawR. J. (1991). Age-related increases in the effects of automatic semantic activation. Psychology and Aging, 6, 595–604.
39.
ShillingV. M.ChetwyndA.RabbittP. M. A. (2002). Individual inconsistency across measures of inhibition: An investigation of the construct validity of inhibition in older adults. Neuropsychologia, 40, 605–619.
40.
TranD. B.SilvermanS. E.ZimmermanK.FeldonS. E. (1998). Age-related deterioration of motion perception and detection. Graefe’s Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology, 236, 269–273.
41.
Van der LubbeR. H.VerlegerR. (2002). Aging and the Simon task. Psychophysiology, 39, 100–110.
42.
Van’t EntD. (2002). Perceptual and motor contributions to performance and ERP components after incorrect motor activation in a flanker reaction task. Clinical Neurophysiology, 113, 270–283.
43.
VerhaeghenP. (2011). Aging and executive control: Reports of a demise greatly exaggerated. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 174–180.
44.
Wild-WallN.FalkensteinM.HohnsbeinJ. (2008). Flanker interference in young and older participants as reflected in event-related potentials. Brain Research, 1211, 72–84.
45.
WylieS. A.RidderinkhofK. R.EckerleM. K.ManningC. A. (2007). Inefficient response inhibition in individuals with mild cognitive impairment. Neuropsychologia, 45, 1408–1419.
46.
ZeefE. J.KokA. (1993). Age-related differences in the timing of stimulus and response processes during visual selective attention: Performance and psychophysiological analyses. Psychophysiology, 30, 138–151.
47.
ZeefE. J.SonkeC. J.KokA.BuitenM. M.KenemansJ. (1996). Perceptual factors affecting age-related differences in focused attention: Performance and psychophysiological analyses. Psychophysiology, 33, 555–565.
48.
ZhouS. S.FanJ.LeeT. M.WangC. Q.WangK. (2011). Age-related differences in attentional networks of alerting and executive control in young, middle-aged, and older Chinese adults. Brain and Cognition, 75, 205–210.
49.
ZhuD. C.ZacksR. T.SladeJ. M. (2010). Brain activation during interference resolution in young and older adults: An fMRI study. NeuroImage, 50, 810–817.
