Citation

Bugg JM, DeLosh EL, Davalos DB, Davis HP. Aging Neuropsychol. Cogn. 2007; 14(2): 155-167.

Affiliation

Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA. jbugg@artsci.wustl.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/138255891007065

PMID

17364378

Abstract

This study examined the contributions of general slowing and task-specific deficits to age-related changes in Stroop interference. Nine hundred thirty-eight participants aged 20 to 89 years completed an abbreviated Stroop color-naming task and a subset of 281 participants also completed card-sorting, simple reaction time, and choice reaction time tasks. Age-related increases in incongruent color-naming latency and card-sorting perseverative errors were observed. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that the processing speed measures accounted for significant variance on both dependent measures, but that there was also a significant residual effect of age. An additional regression analysis showed that some of the variance in incongruent color-naming, after controlling for processing speed, was shared with the variance in perseverative errors. Overall, findings suggest that the age difference in Stroop interference is partially attributable to general slowing, but is also attributable to age-related changes in task-specific processes such as inhibitory control.

Language: en