Aging effects on symbolic number comparison
- Whereas many cognitive tasks show pronounced aging effects, even in healthy older adults, other tasks seem more resilient to aging. A small number of recent studies suggests that number comparison is possibly one of the abilities that remain unaltered across the life span. We investigated the ability to compare single-digit numbers in young (19-39 years; n = 39) and healthy older (65-79 years; n = 39) adults in considerable detail, analyzing accuracy as well as mean and variance of their response time, together with several other well-established hallmarks of numerical comparison. Using a recent comprehensive process model that parsimoniously accounts quantitatively for many aspects of number comparison (Reike & Schwarz, 2016), we address two fundamental problems in the comparison of older to young adults in numerical comparison tasks: (a) to adequately correct speed measures for different levels of accuracy (older participants were significantly more accurate than young participants), and (b) to distinguish between general sensoryWhereas many cognitive tasks show pronounced aging effects, even in healthy older adults, other tasks seem more resilient to aging. A small number of recent studies suggests that number comparison is possibly one of the abilities that remain unaltered across the life span. We investigated the ability to compare single-digit numbers in young (19-39 years; n = 39) and healthy older (65-79 years; n = 39) adults in considerable detail, analyzing accuracy as well as mean and variance of their response time, together with several other well-established hallmarks of numerical comparison. Using a recent comprehensive process model that parsimoniously accounts quantitatively for many aspects of number comparison (Reike & Schwarz, 2016), we address two fundamental problems in the comparison of older to young adults in numerical comparison tasks: (a) to adequately correct speed measures for different levels of accuracy (older participants were significantly more accurate than young participants), and (b) to distinguish between general sensory and motor slowing on the one hand, as opposed to a specific age-related decline in the efficiency to retrieve and compare numerical magnitude representations. Our results represent strong evidence that healthy older adults compare magnitudes as efficiently as young adults, when the measure of efficiency is uncontaminated by strategic speed-accuracy trade-offs and by sensory and motor stages that are not related to numerical comparison per se. At the same time, older adults aim at a significantly higher accuracy level (risk aversion), which necessarily prolongs processing time, and they also show the well-documented general decline in sensory and/or motor functions.…
Author details: | Dennis ReikeORCiDGND, Wolfgang SchwarzORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000272 |
ISSN: | 0882-7974 |
ISSN: | 1939-1498 |
Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29975082 |
Title of parent work (English): | Psychology and aging |
Subtitle (English): | no deceleration of numerical information retrieval but more conservative decision-making |
Publisher: | American Psychological Association |
Place of publishing: | Washington |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2019/01/01 |
Publication year: | 2019 |
Release date: | 2021/04/15 |
Tag: | cognitive aging effects; numerical comparison; numerical distance effect; random walk model; speed-accuracy trade-off |
Volume: | 34 |
Issue: | 1 |
Number of pages: | 13 |
First page: | 4 |
Last Page: | 16 |
Funding institution: | Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)German Research Foundation (DFG) [SCHW 611/5-1] |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Psychologie |
DDC classification: | 1 Philosophie und Psychologie / 15 Psychologie / 150 Psychologie |
Peer review: | Referiert |