Allen P A, Ashcraft M H, Weber T A
Department of Psychology, Cleveland State University, Ohio 44115.
Psychol Aging. 1992 Dec;7(4):536-45. doi: 10.1037//0882-7974.7.4.536.
In 2 experiments, younger and older adults were presented with simple multiplication problems (e.g., 4 x 7 = 28 and 5 x 3 = 10) for their timed, true or false judgments. All of the effects typically obtained in basic research on mental arithmetic were obtained, that is, reaction time (a) increased with the size of the problem, (b) was slowed for answers deviating only a small amount from the correct value, and (c) was slowed when related (e.g., 7 x 4 = 21) versus unrelated (e.g., 7 x 4 = 18) answers were presented. Older adults were slower in their judgments. Most important, age did not interact significantly with problem size or split size. The authors suggest that elderly adults' central processes, such as memory retrieval and decision making, did not demonstrate the typical age deficit because of the skilled nature of these processes in simple arithmetic.
在两项实验中，向年轻和年长的成年人呈现简单的乘法问题（例如，4×7 = 28和5×3 = 10），让他们进行限时的正误判断。在基础心算研究中通常获得的所有效应都出现了，即：（a）反应时间随着问题规模的增大而增加；（b）对于仅与正确值有少量偏差的答案，反应时间会变慢；（c）当呈现相关答案（例如，7×4 = 21）与不相关答案（例如，7×4 = 18）时，反应时间会变慢。年长成年人的判断速度较慢。最重要的是，年龄与问题规模或差值规模之间没有显著的交互作用。作者认为，由于这些简单算术过程具有熟练性，老年人的中枢过程，如记忆检索和决策，并未表现出典型的年龄缺陷。
