School of Social and Behavioral Health Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis.
Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2020 Oct 16;75(9):1819-1830. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gby124.
Control beliefs are established correlates of cognitive aging. Despite recent demonstrations that response time inconsistency (RTI) represents a proxy for cognitive processing efficiency, few investigations have explored links between RTI and psychosocial correlates. We examined associations among RTI and control beliefs (perceived competence and locus of control) for two choice-response time (RT) tasks varying in their attentional demands.
Control beliefs and RTI were measured weekly for 5 weeks in a sample of 304 community-dwelling older adults (Mage = 74.11 years, SD = 6.05, range = 64-92, 68.58% female).
Multilevel models revealed that for the attentionally demanding task, reporting higher perceived competence than usual was associated with lower RTI for relatively younger participants and greater RTI for relatively older participants. For the less attentionally demanding task, reporting higher perceived competence than usual was associated with lower RTI for relatively older participants. Links between locus of control and RTI were comparatively scant.
Our findings suggest that control beliefs may have adaptive and maladaptive influences on RTI, depending on dimension of control beliefs, individual differences in level of control beliefs and age, as well as attentional task demands. Both for whom and when control beliefs can be leveraged to optimize cognitive aging are discussed.
控制信念是认知老化的既定相关因素。尽管最近有研究表明，反应时不一致（RTI）代表认知加工效率的代理指标，但很少有研究探讨 RTI 与心理社会相关因素之间的联系。我们考察了两种选择反应时（RT）任务中 RTI 与控制信念（感知能力和控制源）之间的关联，这两种任务的注意力需求不同。
在一个由 304 名社区居住的老年人组成的样本中，每周测量一次控制信念和 RTI，共测量 5 周（平均年龄=74.11 岁，标准差=6.05，范围=64-92，68.58%为女性）。
多层次模型显示，对于注意力要求较高的任务，报告的感知能力比平时高与相对年轻的参与者的 RTI 较低和相对年长的参与者的 RTI 较高有关。对于注意力要求较低的任务，报告的感知能力比平时高与相对年长的参与者的 RTI 较低有关。控制源与 RTI 之间的联系相对较少。
我们的发现表明，控制信念可能对 RTI 产生适应性和不适应性影响，具体取决于控制信念的维度、控制信念水平和年龄的个体差异以及注意力任务的要求。讨论了何时以及对谁可以利用控制信念来优化认知老化。
