Guttentag R E, Madden D J
Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro 27412.
Exp Aging Res. 1987 Spring-Summer;13(1-2):93-9. doi: 10.1080/03610738708259307.
The attentional demands of letter matching were assessed using a secondary task technique with three adult subject groups. The mean ages were: Group 1 = 19.9 years, Group 2 = 58.7 years, Group 3 = 68.9 years. The primary task was letter matching on the basis of physical identity (PI) or name identity (NI); the secondary task was speeded response to a tone. Relative to baseline (single-task) tone RTs, subjects at all ages responded more slowly in the dual-task condition to tones on name-match trials than on physical-match trials. Also, the proportional difference in tone RT between baseline and dual-task trials was significantly larger for Group 3 than Group 1, but this analysis did not reveal a larger age difference for NI than PI matching. However, a second analysis revealed that absolute differences in tone RT between baseline and dual-task trials increased with age, and the magnitude of this effect was larger for NI than PI matching. The implications of the findings for theories of age differences in attentional capacity, and for issues in the measurement of attentional demands, are discussed.
使用一项二级任务技术对三个成年受试者组进行字母匹配的注意力需求评估。平均年龄分别为：第1组 = 19.9岁，第2组 = 58.7岁，第3组 = 68.9岁。主要任务是基于物理特征匹配（PI）或名称匹配（NI）进行字母匹配；二级任务是对音调进行快速反应。相对于基线（单任务）音调反应时，所有年龄段的受试者在双任务条件下对名称匹配试验中的音调反应比对物理匹配试验中的音调反应更慢。此外，第3组在基线和双任务试验之间的音调反应时的比例差异显著大于第1组，但该分析未显示出名称匹配比物理特征匹配存在更大的年龄差异。然而，第二项分析表明，基线和双任务试验之间的音调反应时的绝对差异随年龄增长而增加，并且这种效应在名称匹配中比在物理特征匹配中更大。讨论了这些发现对注意力容量年龄差异理论以及注意力需求测量问题的影响。
