Age-related changes in executive function: An event-related potential (ERP) investigation of task-switching

Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition

Volumn 15, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 95-128

  Friedman, David ^a   Nessler, Doreen ^a   Johnson Jr , Ray ^b   Ritter, Walter ^c   Bersick, Michael ^a  

^a NEW YORK STATE PSYCHIATRIC INSTITUTE   (United States)

^b CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

^c NATHAN S KLINE INSTITUTE FOR PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH   (United States)

Author keywords

Attentional resources; Cognitive aging; ERPs; Executive control; Medial frontal negativity; P3a; P3b; Response conflict; Task switching

Indexed keywords

ADULT; AGE; AGED; ARTICLE; ATTENTION; COGNITIVE DEFECT; ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY; EVOKED RESPONSE; FEMALE; HOSPITALIZATION; HUMAN; LEARNING; MALE; MIDDLE AGED; PHYSIOLOGY; REACTION TIME;

ADULT; AGE FACTORS; AGED; ATTENTION; COGNITION DISORDERS; ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY; EVOKED POTENTIALS; FEMALE; HUMANS; MALE; MIDDLE AGED; REACTION TIME; SEVERITY OF ILLNESS INDEX; TRANSFER (PSYCHOLOGY);

EID: 44449104404     PISSN: 13825585     EISSN: 17444128     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13825580701533769     Document Type: Article

References (83)

1. Adams, R. L., Smigielski, J., & Jenkins, R. L. (1984). Development of the Satz-Mogel short form of the WAIS-R. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 52, 908.
2. Allport, A., Styles, E. A., & Hsieh, S. (1994). Shifting intentional set: Exploring the dynamic control of tasks. In C. Umiltà & M. Moscovitch (Eds.), Attention and performance (Vol. XV, pp. 421-452). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
3. Arrington, C. M., & Logan, G. D. (2004). The cost of a voluntary task switch. Psychological Science, 15(9), 610-615. (Pubitemid 39234376)
4. Band, G. P., & Kok, A. (2000). Age effects on response monitoring in a mental-rotation task. Biological Psychology, 51(2-3), 201-221. (Pubitemid 30109230)
5. Barcelo, F. (2003). The Madrid Card Sorting Test (MCST): A task switching paradigm to study executive attention with event-related potentials. Brain Research Protocols, 11(1), 27-37. (Pubitemid 36412200)
6. Barcelo, F., Perianez, J. A., & Knight, R. T. (2002). Think differently: A brain orienting response to task novelty. Neuroreport, 13(15), 1887-1892. (Pubitemid 35398954)
7. Bartholow, B. D., Pearson, M. A., Dickter, C. L., Sher, K. J., Fabiani, M., & Gratton, G. (2005). Strategic control and medial frontal negativity: Beyond errors and response conflict. Psychophysiology, 42(1), 33-42. (Pubitemid 40395413)
8. Botvinick, M. M., Cohen, J. D., & Carter, C. S. (2004). Conflict monitoring and anterior cingulate cortex: An update. Trends in Cognitvie Sciences, 8(12), 539-546. (Pubitemid 39536251)
9. Braver, T. S., Reynolds, J. R., & Donaldson, D. I. (2003). Neural mechanisms of transient and sustained cognitive control during task switching. Neuron, 39(4), 713-726. (Pubitemid 36993587)
10. Buckner, R. L. (2004). Memory and executive function in aging and AD: Multiple factors that cause decline and reserve factors that compensate. Neuron, 44(1), 195-208. (Pubitemid 39348840)
11. Cepeda, N. J., Kramer, A. F., & Gonzalez de Sather, J. C. (2001). Changes in executive control across the life span: Examination of task-switching performance. Developmental Psychology, 37(5), 715-730.
12. Daffner, K. R., Scinto, L. F., Weitzman, A. M., Faust, R., Rentz, D. M., Budson, A. E. et al. (2003). Frontal and parietal components of a cerebral network mediating voluntary attention to novel events. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15(2), 294-313. (Pubitemid 36293137)
13. DiGirolamo, G. J., Kramer, A. F., Barad, V., Cepeda, N. J., Weissman, D. H., Milham, M. P., et al. (2001). General and task-specific frontal lobe recruitment in older adults during executive processes: A fMRI investigation of task-switching. Neuroreport, 12(9), 2065-2071. (Pubitemid 32553732)
14. Donchin, E., & Coles, M. G. H. (1988). Is the P300 component a manifestation of context updating? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 11, 357-374.
15. Friedman, D., Kazmerski, V. A., & Cycowicz, Y. M. (1998). Effects of aging on the novelty P3 during attend and ignore oddball tasks. Psychophysiology, 35(5), 508-520. (Pubitemid 28376058)
16. Friedman, D., Cycowicz, Y. M., & Gaeta, H. (2001). The novelty P3: An event-related brain potential (ERP) sign of the brain's evaluation of novelty. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 25(4), 355-373. (Pubitemid 32624376)
17. Gaeta, H., Friedman, D., Ritter, W., & Cheng, J. (2001). An event-related potential evaluation of involuntary attentional shifts in young and older adults. Psychology and Aging, 16(1), 55-68. (Pubitemid 32232976)
18. Gehring, W. J., & Fencsik, D. E. (2001). Functions of the medial frontal cortex in the processing of conflict and errors. Journal of Neuroscience, 21(23), 9430-9437. (Pubitemid 33096886)
19. Gehring, W. J., & Willoughby., A. R. (2002). The medial frontal cortex and the rapid processing of monetary gains and losses. Science, 295, 2279-2282. (Pubitemid 34258845)
20. Gurland, B., Golden, R. R., Teresi, J. A., & Challop, J. (1984). The SHORT CARE: An efficient instrument for the assessment of depression, dementia and disability. Journal of Gerontology, 39, 166-169. (Pubitemid 14156160)
21. Halgren, E., Marinkovic, K., & Chauvel, P. (1998). Generators of the late cognitive potentials in auditory and visual oddball tasks. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 106, 156-164. (Pubitemid 28133396)
22. Hillman, C. H., Kramer, A. F., Belopolsky, A. V., & Smith, D. P. (2006). A cross-sectional examination of age and physical activity on performance and event-related brain potentials in a task switching paradigm. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 59(1), 30-39. (Pubitemid 43081884)
23. Jennings, J. R., & Wood, C. C. (1976). The -adjustment procedure for repeated measures analyses of variance. Psychophysiology, 13, 277-278.
24. Johnson, R., Jr., Barnhardt, J., & Zhu, J. (2004). The contribution of executive processes to deceptive responding. Neuropsychologia, 42(7), 878-901. (Pubitemid 38283808)
25. Johnson, R., Jr., Barnhardt, J., & Zhu, J. (2005). Differential effects of practice on the executive processes used for truthful and deceptive responses: An event-related brain potential study. Cognitive Brain Research, 24(3), 386-404. (Pubitemid 41133277)
26. Karayanadis, F., Coltheart, M., Michie, P. T., & Murphy, K. (2003). Electrophysiological correlates of anticipatory and poststimulus components of task switching. Psychophysiology, 40, 329-348. (Pubitemid 36596903)
27. Kieffaber, P. D., & Hetrick, W. P. (2005). Event-related potential correlates of task switching and switch costs. Psychophysiology, 42(1), 56-71. (Pubitemid 40395415)
28. Kiesel, A., Wendt, M., & Peters, A. (2007). Task switching: On the origin of response congruency effects. Psychological Research, 71(2), 117-125.
29. Knight, R. T. (1984). Decreased response to novel stimuli after prefrontal lesions in man. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 59, 9-20. (Pubitemid 14128147)
30. Kramer, A. F., Hahn, S., & Gopher, D. (1999). Task coordination and aging: Explorations of executive control processes in the task switching paradigm. Acta Psychologica, 101(2-3), 339-378.
31. Kray, J., & Lindenberger, U. (2000). Adult age differences in task switching. Psychology and Aging, 15(1), 126-147.
32. Kray, J., Li, K. Z., & Lindenberger, U. (2002). Age-related changes in task-switching components: The role of task uncertainty. Brain and Cognition, 49(3), 363-381.
33. Kray, J., Eppinger, B., & Mecklinger, A. (2005). Age differences in attentional control: An event-related potential approach. Psychophysiology, 42(4), 407-416. (Pubitemid 41558244)
34. Liotti, M., Woldorff, M. G., Perez, R., & Mayberg, H. S. (2000). An ERP study of the temporal course of the stroop color-word interference effect. Neuropsychologia, 38(5), 701-711. (Pubitemid 30109449)
35. Logan, G. D. (2003). Executive control of thought and action: In search of the wild homunculus. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12, 45-48. (Pubitemid 36571278)
36. Logan, G. D., & Bundesen, C. (2003). Clever homunculus: Is there an endogenous act of control in the explicit task-cuing procedure? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 29(3), 575-599. (Pubitemid 37189335)
37. Lustig, C., Head, D., Janes, W., & Buckner, R. L. (2006). Frontal-parietal responses to increased demand across the lifespan: Evidence from task switching. Paper presented at the Cognitive Aging Conference. Atlanta, GA.
38. Luu, P., Tucker, D. M., Derryberry, D., Reed, M., & Poulsen, C. (2003). Electrophysiological responses to errors and feedback in the process of action regulation. Psychological Science, 14(1), 47-53. (Pubitemid 37283115)
39. Mayeux, R., Stern, Y., Rosen, J., & Leventhal, J. (1981). Depression, intellectual impairment, and Parkinson disease. Neurology, 31(6), 645-650. (Pubitemid 11070445)
40. Mayr, U. (2001). Age differences in the selection of mental sets: The role of inhibition, stimulus ambiguity, and response-set overlap. Psychology and Aging, 16(1), 96-109. (Pubitemid 32230558)
41. Mayr, U., & Kliegl, R. (2000). Task-set switching and long-term memory retrieval, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 1124-1140.
42. Mayr, U., & Liebscher, T. (2001). Is there an age deficit in the selection of mental sets? European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 13, 47-69. (Pubitemid 32367201)
43. McCarthy, G., & Wood, C. C. (1985). Scalp distributions of event-related potentials: An ambiguity associated with analysis of variance models. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 62, 203-208. (Pubitemid 15036868)
44. Meiran, N., Gotler, A., & Perlman, A. (2001). Old age is associated with a pattern of relatively intact and relatively impaired task-set switching abilities. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 56(2), P88-102.
45. Milham, M. P., Erickson, K. I., Banich, M. T., Kramer, A. F., Webb, A., Wszalek, T., et al. (2002). Attentional control in the aging brain: Insights from an fMRI study of the Stroop task. Brain and Cognition, 49(3), 277-296.
46. Miller, E. K., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 24, 167-202. (Pubitemid 32695227)
47. Monsell, S. (2003). Task switching. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(3), 134-140. (Pubitemid 36294174)
48. Monsell, S., & Mizon, G. A. (2006). Can the task-cuing paradigm measure an endogenous task-set reconfiguration process? Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception and Performance, 32(3), 493-516. (Pubitemid 44195464)
49. Naghavi, H. R., & Nyberg, L. (2005). Common fronto-parietal activity in attention, memory, and consciousness: Shared demands on integration? Conscious and Cognition, 14(2), 390-425. (Pubitemid 40799207)
50. Nessler, D., Johnson, R., Bersick, M., & Friedman, D. (2006). On why the elderly have normal semantic retrieval but deficient episodic encoding: A study of left inferior frontal ERP activity. Neuroimage, 30, 299-312. (Pubitemid 43243220)
51. Nessler, D., Friedman, D., R. Johnson, J., & Bersick, M. (in press). ERPs suggest that age affects cognitive control but not response conflict detection. Neurobiology of Aging.
52. Nicholson, R., Karayanidis, F., Poboka, D., Heathcote, A., & Michie, P. T. (2005). Electrophysiological correlates of anticipatory task-switching processes. Psychophysiology, 42(5), 540-554. (Pubitemid 43942834)
53. Oldfield, R. C. (1971). The assessment and analysis of handedness: The Edinburgh inventory. Neuropsychologia, 9(1), 97-113.
54. Picton, T. W., Bentin, S., Berg, P., Donchin, E., Hillyard, S. A., Johnson, R., Jr. et al. (2000). Guidelines for using human event-related potentials to study cognition: Recording standards and publication criteria. Psychophysiology, 37(2), 127-152. (Pubitemid 30140280)
55. Ranganath, C., & Rainer, G. (2003). Neural mechanisms for detecting and remembering novel events. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 4(3), 193-202. (Pubitemid 37280184)
56. Reimers, S., & Maylor, E. A. (2005). Task switching across the life span: Effects of age on general and specific switch costs. Developmental Psychology, 41(4), 661-671. (Pubitemid 41168506)
57. Reuter-Lorenz, P. A. (2005). The cognitive neuroscience of working memory and aging. In R. Cabeza, L. Nyberg & D. Park (Eds.), Cognitive neuroscience of aging (pp. 186-217). New York: Oxford University Press.
58. Reuter-Lorenz, P. A., & Lustig, C. (2005). Brain aging: Reorganizing discoveries about the aging mind. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 15(2), 245-251. (Pubitemid 41569276)
59. Ridderinkhof, K. R., Ullsperger, M., Crone, E. A., & Nieuwenhuis, S. (2004). The role of the medial frontal cortex in cognitive control. Science, 306(5695), 443-447. (Pubitemid 39372436)
60. Rogers, R. D., & Monsell, S. (1995). Costs of a predictable switch between simple cognitive tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 124, 207-231.
61. Ruchkin, D. S., Johnson, R., Jr., & Friedman, D. (1999). Scaling is necessary when making comparisons between shapes of event-related potential topographies: A reply to Haig et al. Psychophysiology, 36(6), 832-834. (Pubitemid 29498339)
62. Rushworth, M. F., Passingham, R. E., & Nobre, A. C. (2002). Components of switching intentional set. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14(8), 1139-1150. (Pubitemid 35305820)
63. Salthouse, T. A. (1990). Working memory as a processing resource in cognitive aging. Developmental Review, 10, 101-124.
64. Salthouse, T. A., Fristoe, N., McGuthry, K. E., & Hambrick, D. Z. (1998). Relation of task switching to speed, age, and fluid intelligence. Psychology and Aging, 13(3), 445-461. (Pubitemid 28443503)
65. Satz, P., & Mogel, S. (1962). An abbreviation of the WAIS for clinical use. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 30, 97-99.
66. Schneider, D. W., & Logan, G. D. (2005). Modeling task switching without switching tasks: A short-term priming account of explicitly cued performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 134(3), 343-367. (Pubitemid 41323153)
67. Semlitsch, H. V., Anderer, P., Schuster, P., & Presslich, O. (1986). A solution for reliable and valid reduction of ocular artifacts, applied to the P300 ERP. Psychophysiology, 23(6), 695-703. (Pubitemid 17014356)
68. Slagter, H. A., Weisman, D. H., Giesbrecht, B., Kenemans, J. L., Mangun, G. R., Kok, A., et al. (2006). Brain regions activated by endogenous preparatory set shifting as revealed by fMRI. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 6(3), 175-189. (Pubitemid 46037134)
69. Stemmer, B., Segalowitz, S. J., Witzke, W., & Schonle, P. W. (2004). Error detection in patients with lesions to the medial prefrontal cortex: An ERP study. Neuropsychologia, 42(1), 118-130. (Pubitemid 37522014)
70. Stuss, D. T., Shallice, T., Alexander, M. P., & Picton, T. W. (1995). A multidisciplinary approach to anterior attentional functions. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 769, 191-211. (Pubitemid 26075893)
71. Themanson, J. R., Hillman, C. H., & Curtin, J. J. (2006). Age and physical activity influences on action monitoring during task switching. Neurobiology of Aging, 27(9), 1335-1345. (Pubitemid 44173056)
72. Urbach, T. P., & Kutas, M. (2002). The intractability of scaling scalp distributions to infer neuroelectric sources. Psychophysiology, 39(6), 791-808. (Pubitemid 36025321)
73. van Asselen, M., & Ridderinkhof, K. R. (2000). Shift costs of predictable and unexpected set shifting in young and older adults. Psychologica Beligica, 40, 259-273.
74. Verhaeghen, P., & Cerella, J. (2002). Aging, executive control, and attention: A review of meta-analyses. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 26(7), 849-857. (Pubitemid 35430288)
75. Wechsler, D. (1997). Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (3rd ed.). New York: Harcourt.
76. West, R. L. (1996). An application of prefrontal cortex theory to cognitive aging. Psychological Bulletin, 120, 272-292. (Pubitemid 126690074)
77. West, R. (2004). The effects of aging on controlled attention and conflict processing in the Stroop task. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16(1), 103-113. (Pubitemid 38117590)
78. West, R., & Baylis, G. C. (1998). Effects of increased response dominance and contextual disintegration on the Stroop interference effect in older adults. Psychology and Aging 13, 206-217. (Pubitemid 28312315)
79. West, R., & Moore, K. (2005). Adjustments of cognitive control in younger and older adults. Cortex, 41(4), 570-581. (Pubitemid 40932320)
80. Wilding, E. L. (2006). The practice of rescaling scalp-recorded event-related potentials. Biological Psychology, 72(3), 325-332.
81. Woldorff, M. G., Hazlett, C. J., Fichtenholtz, H. M., Weissman, D. H., Dale, A. M., & Song, A. W. (2004). Functional parcellation of attentional control regions of the brain. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16(1), 149-165. (Pubitemid 38117594)
82. Wylie, G., & Allport, A. (2000). Task switching and the measurement of "switch costs". Psychological Research, 63(3-4), 212-233.
83. Wylie, G. R., Javitt, D. C., & Foxe, J. J. (2003). Task switching: A high-density electrical mapping study. Neuroimage, 20(4), 2322-2342. (Pubitemid 37543643)