The question is raised whether the slowing of behavior with age is of a general nature, affecting all subprocesses or stages of information processing, or whether it can be ‘localized’ in one or more specific stages. Based upon studies on the stage analysis of the reaction process, it is concluded that there is no converging empirical evidence to answer this question in favor of one of the alternatives. The research findings seem to fit very well in the assumption of a lowering of the signal-to-noise ratio with increasing age, i.e. a lowering of the strength of the signals coming from the sense organs to the brain and from one processing stage to the other.
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