Work

Aging, practice, and perceptual tasks: A diffusion model analysis.

Year: 2006

Type: article

Abstract: Practice effects were examined in a masked letter discrimination task and a masked brightness discrimination task for college-age and 60- to 75-year-old subjects. The diffusion model (Ratcliff, 1978) was fit to the response time and accuracy data and used to extract estimates of components of processing from the data. Relative to young subjects, the older subjects began the experiments with slower and less accurate performance; however, across sessions their accuracy improved because the quality of the information on which their decisions were based improved, and this, along with reduced decision criteria, led to shorter response times. For the brightness, but not the letter, discrimination task, the older subjects' performance matched that of the younger group by the end of 4 sessions, except that their nondecision components of processing were slightly slower. These analyses illustrate how a well-specified model can provide a unified view of multiple aspects of data that are often interpreted separately.

Source: Psychology and Aging

DOI: 10.1037/0882-7974.21.2.353

Authors: Roger Ratcliff, Anjali Thapar, Gail McKoon

Institutions: The Ohio State University, Bryn Mawr College

Language: English

Topic: Aging and Gerontology Research

Subfield: Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders

Awards: RETRIEVAL PROCESSES IN MEMORY, Theoretical analysis of the effects of aging on memory and reaction time, RETRIEVAL PROCESSES IN MEMORY, G5245563927, Discourse, Semantics, and Syntax