Aging and vigilance: who has the inhibition deficit?

The present study compared 18 younger (M = 21.00 years) and 17 older adults (M = 64.29 years) in a modified vigilance task that required the inhibition of a routinized response. The task was a 50-min simulation of industrial inspection, wherein observers were presented with simple displays labeled "good" and "bad" parts. General linear modeling indicated that younger adults showed a doubling of inhibition failures over time (from 19% to 43%); older adults' inhibition failures held constant at approximately 17.5%. In both age groups, those who responded most quickly were also most error-prone. A control experiment, using the traditional vigilance task requiring a response to infrequent "bad" parts, found only small age differences in accuracy and these also favored older adults. This research suggests that younger adults may demonstrate larger inhibition failures when the routinized responses on simple tasks must be suppressed. There are several implications for theory, industrial design, and cognitive assessment.