Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.
Psychol Aging. 2011 Dec;26(4):905-18. doi: 10.1037/a0023832. Epub 2011 May 23.
Inhibitory control functions in old age were investigated with the "masked prime" paradigm in which participants executed speeded manual choice responses to simple visual targets. These were preceded--either immediately or at some earlier time--by a backward-masked prime. Young adults produced positive compatibility effects (PCEs)--faster and more accurate responses for matching than for nonmatching prime-target pairs--when prime and target immediately followed each other, and the reverse effect (negative compatibility effect, NCE) for targets that followed the prime after a short interval. Older adults produced similar PCEs to young adults, indicating intact low-level motor activation, but failed to produce normal NCEs even with longer delays (Experiment 1), increased opportunity for prime processing (Experiment 2), and prolonged learning (Experiment 3). However, a fine-grained analysis of each individual's time course of masked priming effects revealed NCEs in the majority of older adults, of the same magnitude as those of young adults. These were significantly delayed (even more than expected on the basis of general slowing), indicating a disproportionate impairment of low-level inhibitory motor control in old age.
采用“掩蔽启动”范式研究了老年人的抑制控制功能，参与者需要快速手动选择对简单视觉目标做出反应。这些反应之前——无论是立即还是在之前的某个时间——都有一个倒放的掩蔽启动。当启动和目标立即相继出现时，年轻成年人会产生正兼容性效应（PCE）——匹配的反应比不匹配的启动-目标对更快、更准确，而对于短时间间隔后出现的目标则会产生相反的效果（负兼容性效应，NCE）。老年人产生与年轻人相似的 PCE，表明低水平的运动激活仍然完好，但即使延迟时间更长（实验 1）、增加了启动处理的机会（实验 2）和延长了学习时间（实验 3），也无法产生正常的 NCE。然而，对每个个体掩蔽启动效应的时间进程进行的精细分析显示，大多数老年人都存在 NCE，其大小与年轻人相同。这些 NCE 明显延迟（甚至比基于一般减速的预期还要延迟），表明老年人的低水平抑制运动控制存在不成比例的损伤。
