The effects of aging on reaction time in a signal detection task.
Abstract
The effects of aging on response time are examined in 2 simple signal detection tasks with young and older subjects (age 60 years and older). Older subjects were generally slower than young subjects, and standard Brinley plot analyses of response times showed typical results: slopes greater than 1 and (mostly) negative intercepts. R. Ratcliff, D. Spieler, and G. McKoon (2000) showed that the slopes of Brinley plots measure the relative standard deviations of the distributions of response times for older versus young subjects. Applying R. Ratcliff's (1978) diffusion model to fit the response times, their distributions, and response accuracy, it was found that the larger spread in older subjects' response times and their slowness relative to young subjects comes from a 50-ms slowing of the nondecision components of response time and more from conservative settings of response criteria.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The results are consistent with previous modeling studies showing that older subjects accumulate sensory information as rapidly as young subjects but are delayed in responding.
“The results are consistent with previous modeling studies which show that older subjects accumulate sensory information as rapidly as young subjects, but are delayed in responding (Ratcliff et al., 2001).”
From Factors influencing the latency of simple reaction time (2015) · cites this paper as Ratcliff et al., 2001
Cites
Modeling Response Times for Two-Choice Decisions
Ratcliff, R., & Rouder, J. N. (1998) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00067 · Cited by 1,478 · see citing works
Self-citationAging and Information-Processing Rate
Cerella, J. (1990) · Handbook of the Psychology of Aging · doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-101280-9.50018-8 · Cited by 472 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
The Diffusion Decision Model: Theory and Data for Two-Choice Decision Tasks
Ratcliff, R., & McKoon, G. (2008) · Neural Computation · doi:10.1162/neco.2008.12-06-420 · Cited by 3,059 · see citing works
Self-citationDiffusion decision model: Current issues and history
Ratcliff, R., Smith, P. L., Brown, S. D., & McKoon, G. (2016) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2016.01.007 · Cited by 1,630 · see citing works
“Diffusion and other models have been applied to many basic perceptual and memory tasks such as item and associative recognition [2,15,121,122,132], lexical decision [121,133], perceptual tasks including brightness, letter, motion, visual search, contrast, orientation discrimination tasks [7,14,16,44,103,104,134,135],…”
MethodSelf-citationRatcliff, R., & Tuerlinckx, F. (2002) · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · doi:10.3758/bf03196302 · Cited by 838 · see citing works
Self-citationPhysical Activity and Cognitive Vitality
Prakash, R. S., Voss, M. W., Erickson, K. I., & Kramer, A. F. (2015) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015249 · Cited by 376 · see citing works
Factors influencing the latency of simple reaction time
Woods, D. L., Wyma, J. M., Yund, E. W., Herron, T. J., & Reed, B. (2015) · Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · doi:10.3389/fnhum.2015.00131 · Cited by 336 · see citing works
Ratcliff, R., Hasegawa, Y. T., Hasegawa, R. P., Smith, P. L., & Segraves, M. A. (2007) · Journal of Neurophysiology · doi:10.1152/jn.00393.2006 · Cited by 236 · see citing works
Self-citationIntra-individual variability in ADHD, autism spectrum disorders and Tourette's syndrome
Geurts, H. M., Grasman, R. P. P. P., Verté, S., Oosterlaan, J., Roeyers, H., van Kammen, S. M., & Sergeant, J. A. (2008) · Neuropsychologia · doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.06.013 · Cited by 192 · see citing works
van Vugt, M. K., & Jha, A. P. (2011) · Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience · doi:10.3758/s13415-011-0048-8 · Cited by 108 · see citing works
Modeling individual differences in response time and accuracy in numeracy
Ratcliff, R., Thompson, C. A., & McKoon, G. (2015) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2014.12.004 · Cited by 77 · see citing works
Self-citationRobust orienting to protofacial stimuli in autism
Shah, P., Gaule, A., Bird, G., & Cook, R. (2013) · Current Biology · doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.10.034 · Cited by 52 · see citing works
- Authors
- Ratcliff, R., Thapar, A., & McKoon, G.
- Affiliations
- Northwestern University (US)
- Venue
- Psychology and Aging
- Published
- 2001
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 323-341
- ISSN
- 0882-7974 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-1498
- OpenAlex
- W1982365037
- Cited by
- 331
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 22 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 21 · 2016: 18 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 11 · 2012: 15
- FWCI
- 11.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychology and Aging (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute on Aging (AG17083, R01AG017083)
- National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (R01DC001240)
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD MH44640)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology › Aging and Gerontology Research
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Abilities and Testing
- Keywords
- aging, reaction time, signal detection, diffusion models, non-decision time, response criteria, older adults, reaction time variability
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Aging, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Models, Psychological, Reaction Time, Refractory Period, Psychological, Signal Detection, Psychological
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
