Response-Conflict Moderates the Cognitive Control of Episodic and Contextual Load in Older Adults

Objectives:

Decline in cognitive control is one of the primary cognitive changes in normal aging. Reaching a consensus regarding the nature of these age-related changes, however, is complicated by the complexity of cognitive control as a construct.

Methods:

Healthy older and younger adults participated in a multifactorial test of cognitive control. Within participants, the procedure varied as a function of the amount contextual load, episodic load, and response-conflict load present.

Results:

We found that older adults showed impaired performance relative to younger adults. We also found, however, that the response selection process underlying the response-conflict manipulation was a major moderator of age-related differences in both the contextual and episodic load conditions—suggesting a hierarchical organization.

Discussion:

These findings are consistent with previous findings, suggesting that deficits in cognitive control in older adults are directly related to the resolution of response-conflict and that other apparent deficits may be derivative upon the more basic response-conflict related deficit.

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