Hale S, Myerson J, Faust M, Fristoe N
Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, USA.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 1995 Jul;50(4):P202-11. doi: 10.1093/geronb/50b.4.p202.
Older and young adults were tested on eight nonlexical tasks that overlapped extensively in complexity: disjunctive choice reaction time, line-length discrimination, letter classification, shape classification, mental rotation, visual search, abstract matching, and mental paper-folding. Performance on the first seven tasks was associated with equivalently low error rates in both groups, making it possible to directly compare their response times (RTs) on these tasks. Consistent with domain-specific slowing, the relationship between the RTs of the older adults and the RTs of the young adults was well described by a task-independent mathematical (Brinley) function. Evidence from this analysis and from analyses based on task-specific information-processing models leads to similar conclusions and provides converging support for general cognitive slowing in the nonlexical domain.
对老年人和年轻人进行了八项非词汇任务测试，这些任务在复杂度上有广泛重叠：析取选择反应时间、线长辨别、字母分类、形状分类、心理旋转、视觉搜索、抽象匹配和心理折纸。在前七项任务中，两组的表现都伴随着同样低的错误率，这使得能够直接比较他们在这些任务上的反应时间（RTs）。与特定领域的速度减慢一致，老年人和年轻人的反应时间之间的关系可以通过一个与任务无关的数学（布林利）函数得到很好的描述。来自该分析以及基于特定任务信息处理模型的分析的证据得出了相似的结论，并为非词汇领域的一般认知减慢提供了趋同的支持。
