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In most attentional-control tasks, incongruent trials (i.e., trials with a conflict between two responses) are intermixed with congruent trials (i.e., trials without conflict). Typically, performance is slower and more error-prone on incongruent trials than on congruent trials. This congruency effect has been found to be smaller after incongruent trials than after congruent trials. This finding-labeled the congruency sequence effect (CSE)-has been assumed to reflect a dynamic adjustment of attentional control, which enables participants to enhance goal-relevant features and to inhibit irrelevant features. Only a few studies have investigated the impact of aging on the CSE, and their results are mixed. Compared to young adults, older adults were found to show a similar CSE, no CSE, a larger CSE, or a smaller CSE. This discrepancy in results has been interpreted as the consequence of using different tasks. To test for this, we conducted new analyses on 9 tasks-the color Stroop, number Stroop, arrow flanker, letter flanker, Simon, global-local, positive compatibility, and negative compatibility task-from our previous study (Rey-Mermet, Gade, & Oberauer, 2018). Both a null-hypothesis significance testing approach and a Bayesian hypothesis testing approach showed a similar CSE in both age groups for most tasks. Only in the Stroop tasks, the CSE was larger for older adults. These results are incompatible with the hypothesis of a general age-related deficit in attentional control. At the same time, they question the construct validity of the CSE. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Inhibition is often conceptualized as a unitary construct reflecting the ability to ignore and suppress irrelevant information. At the same time, it has been subdivided into inhibition of prepotent responses (i.e., the ability to stop dominant responses) and resistance to distracter interference (i.e., the ability to ignore distracting information). The present study investigated the unity and diversity of inhibition as a psychometric construct, and tested the hypothesis of an inhibition deficit in older age. We measured inhibition in young and old adults with 11 established laboratory tasks: antisaccade, stop-signal, color Stroop, number Stroop, arrow flanker, letter flanker, Simon, global-local, positive and negative compatibility tasks, and n-2 repetition costs in task switching. In both age groups, the inhibition measures from individual tasks had good reliabilities, but correlated only weakly among each other. Structural equation modeling identified a 2-factor model with factors for inhibition of prepotent responses and resistance to distracter interference. Older adults scored worse in the inhibition of prepotent response, but better in the resistance to distracter interference. However, the model had low explanatory power. Together, these findings call into question inhibition as a psychometric construct and the hypothesis of an inhibition deficit in older age. (PsycINFO Database Record