Cherry Barbara J, Adamson Maheen, Duclos Alisa, Hellige Joseph B
a University of Southern California.
Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn. 2005 Dec;12(4):316-339. doi: 10.1080/17444128.2005.10367004.
Thirty younger (Mean Age = 19.9 years) and 20 older adults (Mean Age = 74.7 years) performed Physical and Name Identity letter-matching tasks (matches were either within or between hemispheres) to study age-related changes in 1) the efficiency with which the two hemispheres interact with each other and 2) hemispheric asymmetry. In order to determine whether age-related effects were associated with differences in cognitive resources, the same individuals completed a set of memory span tasks. Performance on the letter-matching tasks indicated that the costs of interhemispheric collaboration were greater for older than for younger participants. However, within the older group, the advantage of spreading processing across both hemispheres increased as memory span decreased, suggesting that older individuals who are challenged by cognitive complexity are more likely to show increased benefits from between-hemisphere processing than individuals who are not so challenged. There was also an overall left visual field/right hemisphere advantage for the younger but not for the older group, suggesting greater age-related declines in right- than left-hemisphere function.
30名较年轻的成年人（平均年龄=19.9岁）和20名较年长的成年人（平均年龄=74.7岁）进行了物理和姓名身份字母匹配任务（匹配在半球内或半球间进行），以研究与年龄相关的变化：1）两个半球相互作用的效率；2）半球不对称性。为了确定与年龄相关的影响是否与认知资源的差异有关，同一批个体完成了一组记忆广度任务。字母匹配任务的表现表明，年长参与者的半球间协作成本高于年轻参与者。然而，在年长组中，随着记忆广度的降低，跨两个半球分散处理的优势增加，这表明受到认知复杂性挑战的年长个体比未受此挑战的个体更有可能从半球间处理中获得更多益处。较年轻的组总体上存在左视野/右半球优势，而较年长的组则没有，这表明右半球功能与年龄相关的衰退比左半球更明显。
