Idowu Mojitola I, Szameitat Andre J
Department of Life Sciences, Division of Psychology, Centre for Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience (CCN), College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Brunel University London, Uxbridge, United Kingdom.
Front Aging Neurosci. 2023 Feb 8;15:976915. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2023.976915. eCollection 2023.
A prominent feature of cognitive aging is the decline of executive function (EF) abilities. Numerous studies have reported that older adults perform poorer than younger adults in such tasks. In this cross-sectional study, the effect of age on four EFs, inhibition, shifting, updating, and dual-tasking, was examined in 26 young adults (mean 21.18 years) and 25 older adults (mean 71.56 years) with the utilization of a pair of tasks for each EF. The tasks employed for DT were the Psychological Refractory Period paradigm (PRP) and a modified test for everyday attention, for inhibition the Stroop and Hayling sentence completion test (HSCT), for shifting a task switching paradigm and the trail making test (TMT), and for updating the backward digit span (BDS) task and a n-back paradigm. As all participants performed all tasks, a further aim was to compare the size of the age-related cognitive decline among the four EFs. Age-related decline was observed in all four EFs in one or both of the tasks employed. The results revealed significantly poorer performance in the older adults in the response times (RTs) of the PRP effect, interference score of the Stroop, RT inhibition costs of the HSCT, RT and error-rate shifting costs of the task switching paradigm, and the error-rate updating costs of the n-back paradigm. A comparison between the rates of decline revealed numerical and statistically significant differences between the four EFs, with inhibition showing the greatest decline, followed by shifting, updating, and dual-tasking. Thus, we conclude that with age, these four EFs decline at different rates.
认知衰老的一个显著特征是执行功能（EF）能力的下降。大量研究报告称，在这类任务中，老年人的表现比年轻人差。在这项横断面研究中，通过为每个执行功能使用一对任务，对26名年轻人（平均21.18岁）和25名老年人（平均71.56岁）进行了年龄对四种执行功能（抑制、转换、更新和双任务）的影响研究。用于双任务的任务是心理不应期范式（PRP）和一项日常注意力的改良测试，用于抑制的是斯特鲁普测试和海林句子完成测试（HSCT），用于转换的是任务切换范式和连线测验（TMT），用于更新的是倒背数字广度（BDS）任务和n-back范式。由于所有参与者都完成了所有任务，另一个目的是比较四种执行功能中与年龄相关的认知衰退程度。在所使用的一项或两项任务中，在所有四种执行功能中都观察到了与年龄相关的衰退。结果显示，老年人在PRP效应的反应时间（RTs）、斯特鲁普干扰得分、HSCT的RT抑制成本、任务切换范式的RT和错误率转换成本以及n-back范式的错误率更新成本方面表现明显较差。衰退率之间的比较显示，四种执行功能在数值上和统计上都存在显著差异，其中抑制功能的衰退最大，其次是转换、更新和双任务。因此，我们得出结论，随着年龄的增长，这四种执行功能以不同的速度衰退。
