Potter Lauren M, Grealy Madeleine A
Department of Applied Psychology, School of Life Sciences, John Muir Building, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn. 2008 Mar;15(2):232-55. doi: 10.1080/13825580701336882.
Inhibitory functions are key mechanisms underlying age related decline (Park & Gutchess, 2000, in: Cognitive aging: A primer. Hove: Psychology Press), yet few studies have investigated their impact on everyday tasks involving action as well as cognition. Using an everyday-based go/no-go task we devised a motor analogy of traditional neuropsychological tests to investigate in 134 older (aged 60-88) and 133 younger adults (aged 20-59) the ability to inhibit a prepotent motor response during an ongoing action. Older adults produced more inhibition failures as expected, but more strikingly inhibitory errors were not all or none; even when the inappropriate response was successfully inhibited, difficulties controlling ongoing movements emerged from as young as people in their 40s. The ability to inhibit therefore does not ensure control of ongoing tasks, and traditional cognitive tests may be unable to detect such difficulties. Furthermore, performance did not covary with education or action speed. Implications for neuropsychological theory and assessing/enhancing functional ability are discussed.
抑制功能是与年龄相关衰退的关键机制（Park & Gutchess，2000年，载于：《认知衰老：入门》。霍夫：心理学出版社），然而很少有研究调查其对涉及行动和认知的日常任务的影响。我们使用基于日常的“停止信号”任务设计了一种传统神经心理学测试的运动类比，以研究134名老年人（60 - 88岁）和133名年轻人（20 - 59岁）在持续行动中抑制优势运动反应的能力。正如预期的那样，老年人产生了更多的抑制失败情况，但更引人注目的是，抑制错误并非全有或全无；即使不适当的反应被成功抑制，从40多岁的人开始就出现了控制持续动作的困难。因此，抑制能力并不能确保对正在进行的任务进行控制，传统的认知测试可能无法检测到此类困难。此外，表现与教育程度或行动速度无关。本文讨论了对神经心理学理论以及评估/增强功能能力的启示。
