Task Switching Across the Life Span: Effects of Age on General and Specific Switch Costs.

“…2000; Mayr, 2000; van Asselen & Ridderinkhof, 2000) and higher for children than for young adults (Cepeda et al., 2001; Cohen et al., 2001; Reimers & Maylor, 2005), though this has not been investigated in children as young as the youngest tested here and though some studies have not…”

“Consistently, lifespan studies showed U-shaped developmental functions for mixing costs, but not for switching costs (cf. Kray et al., 2008; Kray et al., 2004; Reimers & Maylor, 2005).”

“…between individuals—development and aging over the lifespan—the typical finding is that younger adults have smaller mixing costs than children or older adults do, whereas the age groups do not differ markedly on local switch cost (Reimers & Maylor, 2005; for review, see Mayr & Liebscher, 2001).”

“Several studies report increased mixing cost with aging, but no significant changes in switching cost (Kray and Lindenberger, 2000; Mayr, 2001; Reimers and Maylor, 2005).”

“…to which participants slow down on, or in the context of, switch trials) across childhood and adolescence, and subsequent increases in older adults (Cepeda, Kramer, & Gonzalez de Sather, 2001; Crone, Bunge, Van der Molen, & Ridderinkhof, 2006; Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Zelazo, Craik, & Booth, 2004).”

“Reimers and Maylor (2005) also showed a developmental improvement in mixing costs but not in switch costs between 10 and 18 years of age.”

“…trajectories of the processes subserving cognitive flexibility were confirmed by other studies applying switching tasks and investigating a wider range of ages (e.g., Cepeda et al., 2001; Crone et al., 2004; Reimers and Maylor, 2005; Huizinga and van der Molen, 2007; Kray et al., 2008).”

“In support of this hypothesis are the findings of marked declines in executive functioning in older adults (Kramer et al., 2001; Park, 2000; Park et al., 2001; Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Verhaeghen & Cerella, 2002).”

“…of older adults (van Hooren et al., 2007) found effects of education on a set-shifting task, although a younger self-selected sample did not show effects of education on task switching (Reimers & Maylor, 2005), and Ylikowski et al. (1998) reported no education effects on a Stroop switching task.”

“In one of the earliest examples, Reimers and Maylor (2005) used Adobe Flash to examine the effects of age on task-switching performance, finding largely similar results to those from laboratory studies, where data existed.”

“Reimers and Maylor (2005) observed a developmental evolution for mixing switch cost with a decrease between 10–11 years of age and 16–17 years and an even increase from late adolescence to late adulthood, whereas 1 The concept of task set is widespread in the literature but very imprecise.”

“It is possible that the current pattern of age-related impairments on ToM and control tasks is due to problems in inhibiting irrelevant information or maintaining information in working memory (De Beni & Palladino, 2004; Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Sweeney, Rosano, Berman, & Luna, 2001).”

“In contrast, mixing costs, which indicate the maintenance and coordination of multiple task sets, continue to improve well into adolescence and reach adult levels around age 15–17 (Crone et al., 2004; Huizinga and van der Molen, 2007; Reimers and Maylor, 2005).”

“Web-based testing is a reliable medium for psychological studies (Logie and Maylor, 2009; McGraw et al., 2000; Reimers and Maylor, 2005; Spreng and Levine, 2006) and shows concordance with data collected using more traditional offline methods (McGraw et al., 2000).”

“Executive control processes are high-level functions that organize, sequence, and regulate behavior, playing a crucial role in everyday activities and functioning such as planning, holding, and managing multiple open goals, and maintaining cognitive flexibility (Reimers & Maylor, 2005).”

“…responses (Hasher, Lustig, & Zacks, 2007; Hasher & Zacks, 1988), switch task goals (Cepeda, Kramer, & de Sather, 2001; Kray & Lindenberger, 2000; Reimers & Maylor, 2005), and extract and use effective strategies when performing a cognitive task (Dunlosky et al., 2003; Naveh-Benjamin, Brav, &…”

“…2001; Davidson, Amso, Anderson, & Diamond, 2006; Diamond, 1990; Gathercole, Pickering, Ambridge, & Wearing, 2004; Huizinga, Dolan, & van der Molen, 2006; Klingberg, 2006; Luna & Sweeney, 2004; Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Romine & Reynolds, 2005; Rosso, Young, Femia, & Yurgelun-Todd, 2004; Stuss, 1992).”

“However, it is noteworthy to say that some other studies have shown age-related effects of switch cost, for instance in some conditions in which the task is more demanding in terms of alternative of responses (Reimers & Maylor, 2005). a relatively different manner, bLC and the EC systems.”

“…to suggest that web-based studies can reliably replicate laboratory findings (see Buchanan & Smith, 1999; Gosling, Vazire, Srivastava, & John, 2004; McGraw, Tew, & Williams, 2000), including recent studies of aging (e.g., Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Robins, Trzesniewski, Gosling, & Potter, 2002).”

“This is a high proportion of females compared to some Web-based studies, but is comparable with the proportion of women and men in other studies that have used links from the BBC Science and Nature website (e.g., Reimers & Maylor, 2005 ).”

“Absent or reverse age effects on switch costs, however, are a common finding in the literature (Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Wasylyshyn, Verhaeghen, & Sliwinski, 2011; Whitson, Karayanidis, & Michie, 2012).”

“…of aging effects on task shifting reveal robust deficits in mixing but relatively intact task-switching abilities in older age (Kray & Lindenberger, 2000; Mayr & Liebscher, 2001; Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Verhaeghen & Cerella, 2002; for meta-analysis see Wasylyshyn, Verhaeghen, & Sliwinski, 2011).”

“The primary dependent measures on this task were the difference in RT between switch and non switch trials within a block, ie, local switch costs and the difference in RT between switch and non switch blocks, ie, global switch costs ( Karbach & Kray, 2009 ; Reimers & Maylor, 2005 ).”

“GSC typically changes dramatically in magnitude across the lifespan, while LSC typically shows little agerelated change (Cepeda, Kramer & Gonzalez de Sather, 2001; Reimers & Maylor, 2005) providing additional evidence that different mechanisms may be involved in each component.”

“…of studies that have evaluated age-related differences in executive functioning (Cepeda, Kramer, & Gonzalez de Sather, 2001; Davidson et al., 2006; Reimers & Maylor, 2005), the task-switching performance of 9- to 10-year-old children was significantly faster than that of 7- to 8-year-old children.”

“…individual differences in age and cognitive control influenced local switch costs only marginally (Kramer et al., 1999; Kray and Lindenberger, 2000; Reimers and Maylor, 2005; Salthouse et al., 1998), and these two factors did not interact for most behavioural measures (cf., Ruthruff et al., 2001).”

“…contrast, given that both shift and no-shift trials require maintaining multiple task-sets and determining task goals, but only shift trials necessitate switching, local costs are viewed as primarily sensitive to difficulties in switch implementation (Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Rubin & Meiran, 2005).”

“Previous task-switching studies have typically reported age-related increases in general switch costs (Kray & Lindenberger, 2000; Mayr, 2001; Reimers & Maylor, 2005; for a meta-analysis, see Verhaeghen & Cerella, 2002).”

“As expected from previous Internet studies with the BBC (e.g., Maylor et al., 2007; Reimers & Maylor, 2005), the age distribution was positively skewed.”

“1a, b) because there is ample evidence for both types of age effects on general and specific switch costs (e.g., Cepeda et al. 2001; Kray et al. 2008; Reimers and Maylor 2005; see Karbach and Unger 2014 and Verhaeghen and Cerella 2002, for a reviews).”

“There have been several successful attempts to replicate effects previously observed offline using online samples: Reimers and Maylor (2005) replicated the effects of age differences on task-switching performance measured with RTs; Keller et al. (2009) replicated RT findings from a self-paced…”

“Similar to previous task switching studies comparing adults with children (Cepeda et al., 2001; Cohen et al., 2001) and adolescents ( Reimers & Maylor, 2005 ), we found that adults were faster and more accurate on the tasks than children.”

“Inhibitory control is an executive control process that contributes to organizing, sequencing, and regulating behavior in adults as well as children and adolescents (Best & Miller, 2010; Reimers & Maylor, 2005).”

“Consistent with a previous BBC Internet study (Reimers & Maylor, 2005), there were more females than males, especially amongst teenagers.”

“…changes in different aspects of EF, such as task-set selection and maintenance or selective inhibitory control (e.g., Bedard et al., 2002; Cepeda, Kramer, & Gonzalez de Sather, 2001; Comalli, Wapner, & Werner, 1962; Kray et al., 2004; Reimers & Maylor, 2005; see also Zelazo, Craik, & Booth, 2004).”

“Task-switching cost is further considered responsible for the detrimental effects [51, 86, 87].”

“…but focused primarily on accuracy instead of RTs. Future work should include both manual and computerized tasks and should account for both accuracy and RTs and control for the age-related declines in RT performance on EF tasks that begin before middle adulthood (e.g., Reimers & Maylor, 2005).”

“Past studies have shown that RT and accuracy in Switch conditions and global Switch cost in RTs are both sensitive to aging (Kray and Lindenberger, 2000; Reimers and Maylor, 2005; Wasylyshyn et al., 2011), whereas local Switch cost does not change with age (Wasylyshyn et al.”

“They are believed to reflect the difficulty in maintaining and selecting among two or more different potential response sets (Reimers & Maylor, 2005).”

“…and coordination of cognitive processing in complex tasks Cepeda, Kramer, & Gonzalez de Sather (2001), De Luca et al. (2003), Kray et al. (2004), Reimers & Maylor (2005), Williams et al. (1999), Zelazo et al. (2004) (2) Prospective memory (age of sample: 7, 10, younger adults; older adults,…”

“The availability of internet-based psychological tests has increased sample size potential, allowing for finer-grain analysis of age effects (e.g., Hartshorne & Germine, 2015; Reimers & Maylor, 2005).”

“On the contrary, when calculating mixing costs including switch trials, larger mixing costs are reported in children than in adults (Cepeda et al., 2001; Kray et al., 2004; Reimers and Maylor, 2005).”

“Furthermore, available literature shows contradictory results of task switching paradigm between men and women, arguing about men's [11] or women's [16] advantage in multi-tasking.”

“…in mixing costs, which was one of the factors motivating this investigation (Crone, Bunge, van der Molen, & Ridderinkhof, 2006; Crone, Ridderinkhof, Worm, Somsen, & van der Molen, 2004; Karbach & Kray, 2007; Kray, Eber, & Lindenberger, 2004; Kray, Eber, & Karbach, 2008; Reimers & Maylor, 2005).”

“The implementation was designed along lines similar to those of Reimers and Stewart (2015). We used the Black Box ToolKit, Version 2 (www.”

“This is consistent with findings that mixing costs are very developmentally sensitive (e.g., Cepeda et al., 2001; Reimers & Maylor, 2005).”

“We have collected data from a major web-based experiment that has been used to investigate age effects on task switching performance ( Reimers & Maylor, 2005 ).”

“…for stimulus presentation and response recording have been validated by several studies (Barnhoorn, Haasnoot, Bocanegra, & van Steenbergen, 2015; Crump, McDonnell, & Gureckis, 2013; Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Reimers & Stewart, 2015; Schubert, Murteira, Collins, & Lopes, 2013; Simcox & Fiez, 2014).”

“Previous research has shown that the ability to multitask decreases with age (Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Todorov, Del Missier, & Mäntylä, 2014).”

“Our findings converge with the literature suggesting that, given the durability of switch costs (Berryhill & Hughes, 2009; Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Strobach, Liepelt, et al., 2012), a more extensive period of training might be needed to produce notable improvements in such costs.”

“Examples include studies by Reimers and Maylor (2005) for tasks requiring categorization of faces by gender or emotion and Eppinger et al. (2007) for switching between meaning of color word or ink color in a Stroop color task.”

“This finding is consistent with some earlier findings (Kray & Lindenberger, 2000; Reimers & Maylor, 2005), but https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728915000498 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core.”

“Both mixing and local costs decrease over childhood, pointing to agerelated improvement in both goal management and task set switching (Cepeda et al., 2001; Chevalier & Blaye, 2009; Cragg & Nation, 2009; Ellefson, Shapiro, & Chater, 2006; Reimers & Maylor, 2005).”

“The procedure used was similar to that of Reimers and Maylor (2005).”

“…classical experimental effects on response times (RTs) with online measures (Crump, McDonnell, & Gureckis, 2013; Enochson & Culbertson, 2015; Reimers & Maylor, 2005), and measures of the timing performance of Web-based testing setups using specialist software or hardware (Keller,…”

“…to some degree, on both switch and repeat trials alike, but that these selection mechanisms are simply slower in older adults, this account is also able to accommodate the lack of age effects on local switch costs (e. g., Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Verhaeghen & Cerella, 2002; Wasylyshyn et al., 2011).”

“Therefore, the lack of age-related effects on dealing with ambiguous goal hierarchies concurs well with these recent findings on task-switching in older adults (Kray & Lindenberger, 2000; Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Wasylyshyn et al., 2011).”