Department of Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis.
Psychol Aging. 2012 Mar;27(1):106-119. doi: 10.1037/a0023933. Epub 2011 Jun 27.
One mechanism that has been hypothesized to contribute to older adults' changes in cognitive performance is goal neglect or impairment in maintaining task set across time. Mind-wandering and task-unrelated thought may underlie these potential age-related changes. The present study investigated age-related changes in mind-wandering in three different versions of the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART), along with self-reported mind-wandering during a reading for comprehension task. In the SART, both younger and older adults produced similar levels of faster reaction times before No-Go errors of commission, whereas, older adults produced disproportionate post-error slowing. Subjective self-reports of mind-wandering recorded during the SART and the reading task indicated that older adults were less likely to report mind-wandering than younger adults. Discussion focuses on cognitive and motivational mechanisms that may account for older adults' relatively low levels of reported mind-wandering.
有一种假设认为，导致老年人认知表现变化的机制是目标忽视或随着时间推移维持任务集的能力受损。心流和与任务无关的思维可能是这些潜在的与年龄相关的变化的基础。本研究通过三种不同版本的持续注意反应任务（SART）调查了心流随年龄的变化，同时还调查了在阅读理解任务期间的自我报告心流。在 SART 中，年轻和年长的成年人在做出错误的 No-Go 反应之前产生了相似的更快反应时间水平，而年长的成年人则产生了不成比例的错误后减速。在 SART 和阅读任务期间记录的主观自我报告心流表明，年长的成年人报告心流的可能性低于年轻的成年人。讨论的重点是可能解释年长成年人相对较低的报告心流水平的认知和动机机制。
