Radović Tara, Kübler Sebastian, Mikolajczyk Rafael, Kluttig Alexander, Maydych Viktoria, Schubert Torsten
Institute for Psychology, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle (Saale), Germany.
Department of Psychology, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Front Aging Neurosci. 2025 Aug 26;17:1619441. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2025.1619441. eCollection 2025.
Previous studies provided inconclusive results regarding the effects of aging on the ability to flexibly switch between task rules (local switch cost). The goal of the present study was to investigate the influence of age on the local switch costs at two levels of difficulty (easy task switching: two task rules vs. difficult task switching: four task rules).
The local switch costs, i.e., reaction time and error differences between trials with a task switch and task repetition relative to the previous trial, were compared in a group of young adults (19 to 33 years) and three groups of older adults (64-72; 73-80; 82-97 years).
The analysis of the switch costs showed significantly higher switch costs of the three groups of older adults compared to the younger adults and the effect was more pronounced in the difficult task switching than in the easy task switching. At the same time, there were no clear differences in the local switch costs between the three groups of older adults.
The results showed that even after the age-related slowdown was taken into account, age differences in local switch costs will emerge when the age range of older adults is extended and task difficulty is sufficiently high. These findings contribute to our understanding of how and when age differences in cognitive flexibility emerge and suggest that complex multitasking environments may disproportionately challenge older adults.
先前的研究关于衰老对灵活切换任务规则能力（局部切换成本）的影响得出了不确定的结果。本研究的目的是在两种难度水平下（简单任务切换：两种任务规则与困难任务切换：四种任务规则）研究年龄对局部切换成本的影响。
比较了一组年轻人（19至33岁）和三组老年人（64 - 72岁；73 - 80岁；82 - 97岁）的局部切换成本，即任务切换试验与相对于前一次试验的任务重复试验之间的反应时间和错误差异。
对切换成本的分析表明，与年轻人相比，三组老年人的切换成本显著更高，并且在困难任务切换中这种影响比在简单任务切换中更明显。同时，三组老年人之间的局部切换成本没有明显差异。
结果表明，即使考虑到与年龄相关的反应速度减慢，当老年人的年龄范围扩大且任务难度足够高时，局部切换成本的年龄差异仍会出现。这些发现有助于我们理解认知灵活性的年龄差异如何以及何时出现，并表明复杂的多任务环境可能对老年人构成不成比例的挑战。
