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

“Age differences in global switch costs are more robust (e.g., Mayr, 2001; Reimers & Maylor, 2005), but these are often eliminated when generalized slowing is taken into account.”

“…evidence that components of working memory updating, inhibition, and set shifting display signs of age-related improvements across middle childhood and often 118 continue to improve until late adolescence or early adulthood (Huizinga et al., 2006; Luciana et al., 2005; Reimers & Maylor, 2005).”

“…trajectories over the adult lifespan, with certain skills declining earlier than others (e.g., Daniels et al., 2006; Meiran and Gotler, 2001; Reimers and Maylor, 2005) and at substantially different rates depending on the age group – e.g., slow decline in middle age with rapid decline in…”

“This design mixing numerosity and phonological comparisons entails switch costs (slower responses for switch trials than for nonswitch trials within blocks mixing the two), but these specific costs have been found to be stable across age when general development-related slowing is taken into account [37].”

“The corresponding literature in taskswitching contends that (1) mixing cost magnitudes increase with increasing age (Reimers and Maylor, 2005) and (2) switch cost magnitudes do not vary substantially as a function of aging (Kray and Lindenberger, 2000; Reimers and Maylor, 2005; for a metaanalytical approach see Wasyly…”

“…in speed of execution for simple and/or more complicated tasks (Fozard, Vercruysse, Reynolds, Hancock, & Quiller, 1994; Dane & Erzurumluoglu, 2003; Deary & Der, 2005; Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Der & Deary, 2006; Tun & Lachman, 2008) others have not found this effect (Meinz & Salthouse, 1998).”

“While previous studies show that both mixing costs and switching costs already occur in childhood (e.g., Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Vernucci et al., 2023), the present study further shows that both children’s mixing costs (see Experiments 1 and”

“…in terms of age effects where some studies have shown that older adults have greater switch costs compared to younger adults (e.g., Cepeda et al., 2001; Hillman et al., 2006; Kray et al., 2002) but other studies do not (e.g., Kray et al., 2005; Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Salthouse et al., 1998).”

“As in Reimers and Maylor (2005), trials were paired, with repetitions of the same cue, meaning that trials were always cue/task switch followed by nonswitch, followed by cue/task switch followed by Figure 1.”

“Thus, again, the present results are at odds with previous findings (Ong et al., 2012; Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Van Dijk, Van Gerven, Van Boxtel, Van Der Elst, & Jolles, 2008; Van Gerven, Meijer, & Jolles, 2007), while they do match with those studies showing an association between educational level…”

“…for Affective Design Engineering, Kanazawa Institute of Technology, Yatsukaho Hakusan 924-0838, Japan (e-mail: kunimi@neptune.kanazawa-it. ac.jp) 心理学研究 2011年 第 82巻 第 4号 pp. 399-405 研究報告 差はなかったが，フォルスアラーム率は，若年者より も高齢者の方が多かった。さらに，無意味な線画の再 認成績を年代群で比較した Koutstaal, Reddy, Jackson, Prince, Cendan, &…”

“This study showed that changes in reaction time caused by switching tasks, or switch cost, was lowest for those aged 16 and 17 and highest for those in the age brackets of 61-66 and 10-11 (Reimers & Maylor, 2005).”

“In one study, a large sample of 5271 participants from age 10 to 66 took part in an internet based taskswitching study (Reimers & Maylor, 2005).”

“Later studies helped specifying the changes in task-switching performance across age in more detail (e.g., Kray, Eber, & Lindenberger, 2004; Lucenet, Blaye, Chevalier, & Kray, 2014; Reimers & Maylor, 2005).”

“Reimers and Maylor (2005) reported a linear age-related decline in task-switching RT, but a stable ER from 18 to 66 years old 4 .”

“Switching costs are commonly reported to increase with age, which is consistent with the results of the present study [22,23].”

“Switch costs are associated with the ability to switch between rules, response preparation, and the reconfiguration of action sets (Wiseheart et al., 2016), showing small age-related development (Reimers & Maylor, 2005).”

“Previous studies have shown a decline in multitasking performance as age increases (Kievit et al., 2014; Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Todorov et al., 2014; Wechsler et al., 2018).”

“Behaviorally, switch costs are more pronounced in children compared to adults (Crone et al., 2006a; Huizinga et al., 2006; Huizinga and van der Molen, 2007; Gupta et al., 2009; Cragg and Chevalier, 2012; Church et al., 2017; but see Luca et al., 2003; Reimers and Maylor, 2005).”

“…y esto se había interpretado como una evidencia de que los procesos de control cognitivo necesarios para coordinar y reconfigurar una tarea son igual de eficientes en los grupos examinados (Crone, Ridderinkhof, Worm, Somsen & van der Molen, 2004) o son más estables (Reimers & Maylor, 2005).”

“This type of cost is an indicator of executive function and reflects the need to maintain and select between task sets (Kray & Linedenberger, 2000; Kray, Li & Lindenberger, 2002; Reimers & Maylor, 2005).”

“Possible labels are global costs, set selection costs, or mixing costs (Kiesel et al., 2010; Mayr, 2001; Reimers & Maylor, 2005).”