LPC, and CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université, 3 Place Victor Hugo, Case D, 13331, Marseille, France.
Mem Cognit. 2021 Aug;49(6):1236-1246. doi: 10.3758/s13421-021-01161-6. Epub 2021 Mar 8.
Effects of prior-task failure (i.e., decreased performance on a target task following failure on a prior task) were tested in young and older adults. Young and older participants (N=120) accomplished a computational estimation task (i.e., providing the best estimates to arithmetic problems) before and after accomplishing a dot comparison task in a control or in a failure condition. Both groups decreased their performance on the target computational estimation following failure on the prior dot comparison task. Also, prior-task failure led young and older adults to select the better strategy less often and to use the easier strategy more often. Our findings show, for the first time, impaired performance after experiencing failure in both young and older adults. We discuss implications of these findings for further our understanding of effects of task transitions (i.e., prior-task success and failure) on cognitive performance.
先前任务失败（即在完成先前任务失败后，在目标任务上的表现下降）的影响在年轻和年长的成年人中进行了测试。年轻和年长的参与者（N=120）在控制或失败条件下完成了一项点比较任务后，先前所完成的计算估计任务（即，为算术问题提供最佳估计）。在先前的点比较任务失败后，两组在目标计算估计上的表现都有所下降。此外，先前任务的失败导致年轻和年长的成年人更不常选择更好的策略，更常使用更容易的策略。我们的发现首次表明，在年轻和年长的成年人中，经历失败后会出现表现受损的情况。我们讨论了这些发现对进一步理解任务转换（即先前任务的成功和失败）对认知表现的影响的意义。
