Spieler Daniel H, Mayr Ulrich, LaGrone Susan
School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta 30332-0170, USA.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2006 Oct;13(5):787-93. doi: 10.3758/bf03193998.
When an initial phase of cued task switching is followed by a phase of single-task trials, older adults show difficulties changing to the more efficient single-task mode of processing (Mayr & Liebscher, 2001). In Experiment 1, we show that these costs follow older adults' continued tendency to inspect task cues even though these provide no new information. In Experiment 2, we included a condition in which task cues were eliminated from the display after the task-switching phase. In this condition, older adults behaved the same as younger adults, suggesting that the presence of the task cue is critical for observing age differences while switching from a "high-control" to a "low-control" mode of processing. We discuss our results in terms of a life-span shift with regard to the reliance on internal versus external sources of information under conditions of high-control demands.
当线索提示的任务切换初始阶段之后是单任务试验阶段时，老年人在转换到更高效的单任务处理模式时会遇到困难（迈尔和利布舍尔，2001）。在实验1中，我们表明，即使任务线索没有提供新信息，这些代价仍伴随着老年人持续检查任务线索的倾向。在实验2中，我们设置了一种条件，即在任务切换阶段之后从显示中消除任务线索。在这种条件下，老年人的表现与年轻人相同，这表明任务线索的存在对于观察从“高控制”到“低控制”处理模式切换时的年龄差异至关重要。我们根据在高控制需求条件下对内部与外部信息源依赖的毕生转变来讨论我们的结果。
