Gottsdanker R
J Gerontol. 1982 May;37(3):342-8. doi: 10.1093/geronj/37.3.342.
Although simple reaction time (RT) to a tone showed a statistically significant increase between 18 and 93 years of age in a sample of 220 men and women, the amount of increase was slight, less than 2 msec/decade. Consequently, the appreciable slowing of more typical behavior with age does not seen attributable to some general process in the central nervous system as has been argued. This degree of stability found for simple RT with age, unexpected from the body of previous work, may reflect equivalence of age groups and use of optimal RT technique. In a second study eight old participants (73 to 84 years) matched on the optimal technique with eight young participants (18 to 24 years) were markedly slower with a long constant preparatory interval but not with elimination of timing cues. Together, the two studies show that simple high level of preparation was either easy of impossible to attain. Behavioral slowing with age can result from ineffective control processes.
尽管在220名男性和女性样本中，对音调的简单反应时间（RT）在18至93岁之间呈现出统计学上的显著增加，但增加量很小，不到2毫秒/十年。因此，与年龄相关的更典型行为的明显减慢似乎并不像有人所主张的那样，归因于中枢神经系统中的某种一般过程。与年龄相关的简单反应时间所发现的这种稳定性程度，与之前的研究结果不同，可能反映了年龄组的等效性以及最佳反应时间技术的使用。在第二项研究中，八名年龄较大的参与者（73至84岁）与八名年龄较小的参与者（18至24岁）在最佳技术上进行匹配，在长的恒定准备间隔下明显较慢，但在消除时间线索时并非如此。这两项研究共同表明，简单的高水平准备要么容易做到，要么根本无法实现。随着年龄增长的行为减慢可能是由无效的控制过程导致的。
