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Keeping It Steady. Older Adults Perform More Consistently on Cognitive Tasks Than Younger Adults

In English

Författare

  • Florian Schmiedek
  • Martin Lövdén
  • Ulman Lindenberger

Summary, in English

People often attribute poor performance to having bad days. Given that cognitive aging leads to lower average levels of performance and more moment-to-moment variability, one might expect that older adults should show greater day-to-day variability and be more likely to experience bad days than younger adults. However, both researchers and ordinary people typically sample only one performance per day for a given activity. Hence, the empirical basis for concluding that cognitive performance does substantially vary from day to day is inadequate. On the basis of data from 101 younger and 103 older adults who completed nine cognitive tasks in 100 daily sessions, we show that the contributions of systematic day-to-day variability to overall observed variability are reliable but small. Thus, the impression of good versus bad days is largely due to performance fluctuations at faster timescales. Despite having lower average levels of performance, older adults showed more consistent levels of performance across days.

Publiceringsår

2013

Språk

Engelska

Sidor

1747-1754

Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie

Psychological Science

Volym

24

Issue

9

Dokumenttyp

Artikel i tidskrift

Förlag

SAGE Publications

Ämne

  • Psychology

Nyckelord

  • cognitive performance
  • daily fluctuations
  • normal aging
  • within-person
  • variability
  • adult development
  • cognitive development
  • aging

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt

  • ISSN: 0956-7976