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Maquestiaux, Lyphout-Spitz, Ruthruff, and Arexis (2020) demonstrated that ideomotor-compatible (IM) tasks (e.g., pressing the left key when an arrow points left) can operate automatically, entirely bypassing the central bottleneck that constrains dual-task performance. But is bottleneck bypassing a specific consequence of IM compatibility or is it due to task ease? To answer this question, we tested the automaticity of a task that was easy but not IM. The task was easy due to the high semantic compatibility between the stimulus and the response: saying "ping" when hearing "pong" and "pong" to "ping" in Experiment 1, saying "low" when hearing "high" and "high" to "low" in Experiment 2. We presented it as Task 2, along with a Task 1 that was not easy, due to the use of an arbitrary stimulus-response mapping. Single-task trials were randomly intermixed with dual-task trials and then used as baselines to assess dual-task costs and to simulate distributions of inter-response intervals (IRIs) predictive of bottleneck bypassing vs. bottlenecking. The results of both experiments provided converging evidence that the entire Task 2 bypassed the bottleneck on virtually all trials: very small dual-task costs, high percentages of response reversals, and a close match between the observed IRI distributions and that predicted by bottleneck bypassing. Neither ideomotor compatibility nor task speed (the semantic task was not particularly fast) explain these findings. We therefore propose that the key to bypassing the central bottleneck is the ease with which people can fully load the stimulus-response mapping into working memory.

Does the Ebbinghaus visual illusion really influence sports performances? Does the influence depend on the type of knowledge (procedural vs. declarative) that guides movement? To address these questions, we evaluated the knowledge hypothesis, a novel hypothesis according to which the more sports performance relies on procedural knowledge, the more it will be influenced by visual illusions. In the context of golf putting, we first used the high-error/low-error motor-learning technique (Experiment 1) or varied the number of practice trials (Experiment 2) to induce novice participants to rely more on procedural knowledge than on declarative knowledge (or vice versa). We then manipulated the perceived size of two golf holes by projecting a ring of small or large circles around them, which caused the holes to appear larger or smaller, respectively. This Ebbinghaus visual illusion had an influence on putting in both experiments. We also observed a pattern of findings consistent with the knowledge hypothesis: the procedural groups were moderately influenced by the illusion when putting, but the declarative groups were influenced only weakly, at best. Among the participants most sensitive to the illusion, the analyses confirmed a significantly stronger influence for the procedural group. Overall, these findings demonstrate that the effect of visual illusions on sports performance is a reliable phenomenon for proceduralized actions. The knowledge hypothesis represents an attractive way of reconciling earlier divergent findings.

A task is ideomotor (IM)-compatible when there is high conceptual similarity between the stimulus and the associated response (e.g., pressing a left key when an arrow points to the left). For such an easy task, can response selection operate automatically, bypassing the attentional bottleneck that normally constrains dual-task performance? To address this question, we manipulated the IM compatibility of a Task 2 that was performed concurrently with a non-IM-compatible Task 1, using the psychological refractory period procedure. Single-task trials, randomly intermixed with dual-task trials, served as a baseline against which to assess dual-task costs. The results indicated bottleneck bypassing (i.e., simultaneous response selection on both tasks) when Task 2 was IM-compatible, as evidenced by negligible dual-task costs on Task 2 (as well as on Task 1), very high percentages of response reversals, and weak correlations between Task-1 and Task-2 reaction times. These findings were supported by a fine-grained simulation analysis of inter-response intervals. We conclude that the perception of an IM-compatible stimulus directly activates the response code, which can then be selecting automatically, without recruiting central attention, consistent with A. G. Greenwald's (Journal of Experimental Psychology, 94, 52-57, 1972) original theory of IM compatibility.

Do visual illusions reliably improve sports performance? To address this issue, we used procedures inspired by Witt et al. (Psychol Sci 23:397–399, 2012) seminal study, which reported that putting on a miniature golf course was positively influenced by an increase in apparent hole size induced by the Ebbinghaus visual illusion. Because Witt et al.’s motor task—putting golf balls toward a hole from the distance of 3.5 m—was impossible for participants who were novices in golf (Experiment 1a), we decided to shorten the putting distance (i.e., 2 m instead of 3.5 m) in Experiment 1b. Otherwise, this second experiment closely followed every other aspects of Witt et al.’s procedure (i.e., one small or one standard golf hole surrounded by a ring of small or large circles). However, this attempt to replicate Witt et al.’s findings failed: the Ebbinghaus illusion significantly influenced neither hole perception nor putting performance. In two subsequent experiments, we encouraged the emergence of the effect of the illusion by simultaneously presenting both versions of the illusion on the mat. This major adaptation successfully modified the perceived size of the hole but had no impact on putting performance (Experiment 2), even when the putting task was made easier by shortening the putting distance to only 1 m (Experiment 3). In the absence of detectable effects of the illusion on putting performance, we conclude that the effects of visual illusions on novice sports performance do not represent a robust phenomenon.

Does aging increase the reliance on central attention to carry out tasks, even when those tasks do not need it? To test the hypothesis of over-reliance on central attention (ORCA), we examined the ability of older adults to entirely bypass ideomotor-compatible (IM) tasks. IM tasks operate automatically for younger adults: The perception of an IM stimulus (e.g., a left-pointing arrow) directly activates the associated response code (e.g., pressing the left key). In a psychological refractory period (PRP) procedure, younger and older adults performed a slow auditory-vocal Task 1 paired with a fast visual-manual Task 2 that was either IM or non-IM. Task-2 compatibility (IM vs. non-IM) was manipulated as a between-subjects factor (Experiment 1) and as a within-subjects factor (Experiment 2). Both experiments yielded the counterintuitive finding of larger age differences in dual-task performance when Task 2 was easy (i.e., IM) than when it was difficult (i.e., non-IM), as evidenced by old/young ratio analyses and Brinley plots. Relatedly, whereas younger adults routinely bypassed the bottleneck with an IM Task 2 (as evidenced by a small PRP effect and a high rate of response reversals), older adults did not. The present findings cannot easily be explained by the hypotheses of generalized cognitive slowing and of specific processing deficits but support the ORCA hypothesis. As cognitive decline sets in, older adults begin to try harder: This extra application of central attention compensates for cognitive decline but can result in applying attention when it is not needed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

To estimate the time-to-contact (TTC) of a moving object, numerous studies have focused on the type of information or gaze strategy used by the observer. However, it remains to be determined whether and how attention could affect TTC estimation. In particular, how does TTC estimation operate when less attention is available? To answer this question, we conducted two experiments in which the participants had to perform an absolute (Experiment 1) or relative (Experiment 2) prediction-motion task, either alone (i.e., in single-task condition) or along with a secondary, visual working-memory task (i.e., in dual-task condition). In both experiments, we found that TTC estimation was superior in dual-task condition relative to single-task condition. This finding suggests that the reduction of available attention actually improves TTC estimation. We discuss possible explanations as well as theoretical implications for this seemingly counter-intuitive finding. Further research is needed to investigate if (in)attention facilitates or only shifts TTC estimation.

Can Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients efficiently learn to perform a complex motor skill when relying on procedural knowledge? To address this question, the authors compared the golf-putting performance of AD patients, older adults, and younger adults in 2 different learning situations: one that promotes high error rates (thus increasing the reliance on declarative knowledge) or one that promotes low error rates (thus increasing the reliance on procedural knowledge). Motor performance was poorer overall for AD patients and older adults relative to younger adults in the high-error condition but equivalent between similar groups in the low-error condition. Also, AD patients in the low-error condition had better performance at the final putting distance relative to those in the high-error condition. This performance facilitation for AD patients likely stems from intact procedural knowledge.

In many dual-task situations, responses to the second of two tasks are slowed when the time between tasks is short. The response-selection bottleneck model of dual-task performance accounts for this phenomenon by assuming that central processing of the second task is blocked by a bottleneck until central processing of Task 1 is complete. This assumption could be called into question if it could be demonstrated that the response to Task 2 affected the central processing of Task 1, a backward response compatibility effect. Such effects are well-established in younger adults. Backward compatibility effects in older (as well as younger) adults were explored in two experiments. The first experiment found clear backward response compatibility effects for younger adults but no evidence of them for older adults. The second experiment explored backward stimulus compatibility and found similar effects in both younger and older adults. Evidence possibly consistent with some pre-bottleneck processing of Task 2 central stages also was found in the second experiment in both age groups. For younger adults, the results provide further evidence falsifying the claim of an immutable response selection bottleneck. For older adults, the evidence suggested that Task 2 affects Task 1 when there is stimulus compatibility but not when there is response compatibility.

Since the seminal study by Chun and Jiang (Cognitive Psychology, 36, 28–71, 1998), a large body of research based on the contextual-cueing paradigm has shown that the cognitive system is capable of extracting statistical contingencies from visual environments. Most of these studies have focused on how individuals learn regularities found within an intratrial temporal window: A context predicts the target position within a given trial. However, Ono, Jiang, and Kawahara (Journal of Experimental Psychology, 31, 703–712, 2005) provided evidence of an intertrial implicit-learning effect when a distractor configuration in preceding trials N − 1 predicted the target location in trials N. The aim of the present study was to gain further insight into this effect by examining whether it occurs when predictive relationships are impeded by interfering task-relevant noise (Experiments 2 and 3) or by a long delay (Experiments 1, 4, and 5). Our results replicated the intertrial contextual-cueing effect, which occurred in the condition of temporally close contingencies. However, there was no evidence of integration across long-range spatiotemporal contingencies, suggesting a temporal limitation of statistical learning.

How do people automatize their dual-task performance through bottleneck bypassing (i.e., accomplish parallel processing of the central stages of two tasks)? In the present work we addressed this question, evaluating the impact of sensory-motor modality compatibility-the similarity in modality between the stimulus and the consequences of the response. We hypothesized that incompatible sensory-motor modalities (e.g., visual-vocal) create conflicts within modality-specific working memory subsystems, and therefore predicted that tasks producing such conflicts would be performed less automatically after practice. To probe for automaticity, we used a transfer psychological refractory period (PRP) procedure: Participants were first trained on a visual task (Exp. 1) or an auditory task (Exp. 2) by itself, which was later presented as Task 2, along with an unpracticed Task 1. The Task 1-Task 2 sensory-motor modality pairings were either compatible (visual-manual and auditory-vocal) or incompatible (visual-vocal and auditory-manual). In both experiments we found converging indicators of bottleneck bypassing (small dual-task interference and a high rate of response reversals) for compatible sensory-motor modalities, but indicators of bottlenecking (large dual-task interference and few response reversals) for incompatible sensory-motor modalities. Relatedly, the proportion of individuals able to bypass the bottleneck was high for compatible modalities but very low for incompatible modalities. We propose that dual-task automatization is within reach when the tasks rely on codes that do not compete within a working memory subsystem.

Does practice reduce, or even eliminate, aging effects on the attentional limitations responsible for dual-task interference? The studies reviewed in this article show that age differences reliably persist after extensive practice. Strikingly, dual-task interference remains larger among older adults even in training conditions that allow them to achieve single-task performance as fast as younger adults. These findings demonstrate that age deficits in attentional functioning are robust. Advancing age also can be accompanied by improvements in cognitive functioning, such as in the ability to access the lexicon without attention (i.e., automatically), due to lifelong experience with word reading. Future research needs to establish whether age deficits in central attention are due to structural changes that are irreversible or reversible to some extent.

Magicians often trick spectators’ senses by relying on cognitive limitations. To do so, they use intuitive but age-old knowledge of human cognition. Research into the relationship between magic and...

BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: The variability associated with reaction time (RT) is sometimes considered as a proxy for inefficient neural processing, particularly in old age and complex situations relying upon executive control functions. Here, it is examined whether the amount of variability exhibited early in practice can predict the amount of improvement with later practice in dual-task performance, and whether the predictive power of variability varies between younger and older adults.To investigate the relationship between variability and practice-related improvement, RT mean and variability data are used, obtained from an experiment in which younger and older adults performed two tasks in single-task and dual-task conditions across seven practice sessions. These RT and variability data were related to the single-task and dual-task practice benefits. These benefits were computed as follows: dual-task/single-task RTs at the beginning of practice minus dual-task/single-task RTs at the end of practice.In both age groups, dual-task processing was speeded up with practice and variability associated with the means was reduced. Most important, independent of mean RTs, variability allowed predicting dual-task practice benefit in both age groups under specific conditions.These findings suggest that the relationship between performance variability and executive control functions under some specific conditions. Implications of these results for models of practiced dual tasks are discussed.

International audience; This commentary explores the relationships between the construct of successful aging and the experimental psychology of human aging—cognitive gerontology. What can or should cognitive gerontology contribute to understanding, defining, and assessing successful aging? Standards for successful aging reflect value judgments that are culturally and historically situated. Fundamentally, they address social policy; they are prescriptive. If individuals or groups are deemed to be aging successfully, then their characteristics or situations can be emulated. If an individual or a group is deemed to be aging unsuccessfully, then intervention should be considered. Although science is never culture-free or ahistorical, cognitive gerontology is primarily descriptive of age-related change. It is not prescriptive. It is argue that cognitive gerontology has little to contribute to setting standards for successful aging. If, however, better cognitive function is taken as a marker of more successful aging—something not universally accepted—then cognitive gerontology can play an important assessment role. It has a great deal to contribute in determining whether an individual or a group evidences better cognitive function than another. More importantly, cognitive gerontology can provide tools to evaluate the effects of interventions. It can provide targeted measures of perception, attention, memory, executive function, and other facets of cognition that are more sensitive to change than most clinical measures. From a deep understanding of factors affecting cognitive function, cognitive gerontology can also suggest possible interventions. A brief narrative review of interventions that have and have not led to improved cognitive function in older adults. Finally, the enormous range is addressed in the estimates of the proportion of the population that meets a standard for aging successfully, from less than 10% to more than 90%. For research purposes, it would be better to replace absolute cutoffs with correlational approaches (e.g., Freund & Baltes, 1998, Psychology and Aging, 13, 531–543). For policy purposes, cutoffs are necessary, but we propose that assessments of successful aging be based not on absolute cutoffs but on population proportions. An example of one possible standard is this: Those more than 1 standard deviation above the mean are aging successfully; those more than 1 standard deviation below the mean are aging unsuccessfully; those in between are aging usually. Adoption of such a standard may reduce the wide discrepancies in the incidence of successful aging reported in the literature.

Witt, Linkenauger, and Proffitt (Psychological Science, 23, 397-399, 2012) demonstrated that golf putting performance was enhanced when the hole was surrounded by small circles, making it look larger, relative to when it was surrounded by large circles, making it look smaller. In the present study, we examined whether practicing putting with small or large surrounding circles would have not only immediate effects on performance, but also longer-lasting effects on motor learning. Two groups of nongolfers practiced putting golf balls to a 10.4-cm circle ("hole") from a distance of 2 m. Small or large circles were projected around the hole during the practice phase. Perception of hole size was affected by the size of the surrounding circles. Also, self-efficacy was higher in the group with the perceived larger hole. One day after practice, participants performed the putting task, but without visual illusions (i.e., a retention test). Putting accuracy in retention was greater for the group that had practiced with the perceived larger hole. These findings suggest that the apparently larger target led to the more effective learning outcome.

Do sexual words have high attentional priority? How does the ability to ignore sexual distractors evolve with age? To answer these questions, two experiments using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) were conducted. Experiment 1 showed that both younger and older participants were better at identifying a target (the name of a colour) when it was preceded by 336 ms by a sexual word rather than by a musical word. Strikingly, the sexual-word advantage was more pronounced for older adults than for younger adults. Experiment 2 showed that introducing a variable delay between the distractor and the target eliminated the sexual-word advantage. This finding suggests that the sexual-word advantage found in Experiment 1 was due to learning to utilize the sexual word as a temporal cue with a fixed duration between the distractor and the target. Contrary to previous research [Arnell et al., 2007, Emotion, 7, 465), neither experiment showed that sexual words produce an attentional blink.

Drivers face frequent distraction on the roadways, but little is known about situations placing them at risk of misallocating visual attention. To investigate this issue, we asked participants to search for a red target embedded within simulated driving scenes (photographs taken from inside a car) in three experiments. Distraction was induced by presenting, via a GPS unit, red or green distractors positioned in an irrelevant location at which the target never appeared. If the salient distractor captures attention, visual search should be slower on distractor-present trials than distractor-absent trials. In Experiment 1, salient distractors yielded no such capture effect. In Experiment 2, we decreased the frequency of the salient distractor from 50% of trials to only 10% or 20% of trials. Capture effects were almost five times larger for the 10% occurrence group than for the 20% occurrence group. In Experiment 3, the amount of available central resources was manipulated by asking participants to either simultaneously monitor or ignore a stream of spoken digits. Capture effects were much larger for the dual-task group than for the single-task group. In summary, these findings identify risk factors for attentional capture in real-world driving scenes: distractor rarity and diversion of attention.

Resume En 1887, Frederic Paulhan a ete le premier a poser de maniere scientifique la question de la simultaneite de deux pensees. Cette revue critique montre comment, en plus d’un siecle, les recherches sur cette question se sont affinees et comment le protocole de la periode refractaire psychologique (PRP) est devenu un veritable « microscope » permettant de dissequer la nature des mecanismes de l’attention. Cet outil de recherche rigoureux a d’abord permis de decouvrir un phenomene psychologique omnipresent et remarquablement robuste – l’effet PRP – imputable a un goulet d’etranglement imposant le traitement seriel de deux pensees. Plus tard, il a conduit a la decouverte de conditions dans lesquelles le traitement mental peut etre automatise, permettant la simultaneite de deux pensees. Le protocole PRP a aussi une large portee puisqu’il permet de tester l’automaticite des operations cognitives dans differents domaines de la psychologie (par ex., emotion, lecture, controle moteur, expertise).

BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: To date, little is known about how advancing age may impact perception of emotions in music. This study was designed to test whether there are age-related changes in emotional judgments and psychological structure for musical emotions.Twenty-five older (64-81 years) and 25 younger (18-30 years) listeners performed emotional judgments and free categorization tasks on happy, peaceful, sad, and threatening musical excerpts. Correlations, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), and multidimensional scaling analyses were conducted to examine the effect of age on emotional judgments and categorization performances.Compared with younger adults, older adults did not discriminate the arousal difference between peaceful and threatening excerpts and showed higher association between arousal and valence judgments. The multidimensional scaling analysis indicated that the emotional space showed by older listeners did not fit younger listeners' bidimensional valence-arousal structure. There was also a better categorization for happy excerpts among the older group.Altogether, these data are consistent with the view that advancing age may result in the reduction of emotional complexity and a distortion of the emotional processing in a positive direction.

There is a response selection bottleneck that is responsible for dual-task interference. How the response selection bottleneck operates was addressed in three dual-task experiments. The overlap between two tasks (as indexed by the stimulus onset asynchrony [SOA]) was systematically manipulated, and both reaction time and electrodermal activity were measured. In addition, each experiment also manipulated some aspect of the difficulty of either task. Both increasing task overlap by reducing SOA and increasing the difficulty of either task lengthened reaction times. Electrodermal response was strongly affected by task difficulty but was only weakly affected by SOA, and in a different manner from reaction time. A fourth experiment found that the subjectively perceived difficulty of a dual-task trial was affected both by task difficulty and by SOA, but in different ways than electrodermal activity. Overall, the results were not consistent with a response selection bottleneck that involves processes of voluntary, executive attention. Instead, the results converge with findings from neural network modeling to suggest that the delay of one task while another is being processed reflects the operation of a routing mechanism that can process only one stream of information for action at a time and of a passive, structural store that temporarily holds information for the delayed task. The results suggest that conventional blocked or event-related neuroimaging designs may be inadequate to identify the mechanism of operation of the response selection bottleneck.

International audience; Does advancing age reduce the ability to bypass the central bottleneck through task automatization? To answer this question, the authors asked 12 older adults and 20 young adults to first learn to perform an auditory-vocal task (low vs. high pitch) in 6 single-task sessions. Their dual-task performance was then assessed with a psychological refractory period paradigm, in which the highly practiced auditory-vocal task was presented as Task 2, along with an unpracticed visual-manual Task 1. Converging evidence indicated qualitative differences in dual-task performance with age: Whereas the vast majority of young adults bypassed the bottleneck, at most 1 of the 12 older adults was able to do so. Older adults are either reluctant to bypass the bottleneck (as a matter of strategy) or have lost the ability to automatize task performance.

International audience; In this research, the controversial issue of whether the central bottleneck can be bypassed through task automatization was investigated. To examine this issue, participants received six single-task practice sessions with an auditory-vocal task (low vs. high pitch). We then assessed dual-task performance using the analytically tractable psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm, in which the highly practiced auditory-vocal task was presented as Task 2, along with an unpracticed visual-manual Task 1. The results provide evidence of bottleneck bypass for virtually all the participants (17 out of 20). Several converging tests suggest that the bottleneck reemerged, however, in a follow-up experiment with tasks presented in the opposite order (auditory-vocal Task 1 and visual-manual Task 2). One possible explanation is that tasks greedily recruit central resources when available, even though they can operate without central resources when unavailable.

Under most circumstances, it is not possible to carry out central processing for 2 tasks at the same time; effectively there is a bottleneck. Nevertheless, in 2 experiments it is demonstrated here that both younger and older adults are able to partially bypass the bottleneck in a psychological refractory period procedure, even without extensive training, when the 2nd of the 2 tasks is a saccade or a body tilt in the direction of rotation of a visual stimulus. Consistent with earlier research, the findings showed that younger adults can bypass when the second task has ideomotor-compatible stimuli and responses. Most strikingly, they demonstrated that bypass can also occur in older adults. Overall, the findings are inconsistent with any categorical claim that younger adults can bypass the dual-task bottleneck whereas older adults cannot. The construct of ideomotor-compatible tasks may comprise 2 quite different classes of experimental procedures.

Le vieillissement de la population est une donnee sociologique essentielle du XXIe siecle. A titre dʼillustration, les personnes de plus de soixante ans, qui ne representaient quʼun Francais sur six en 1950, constitueront le tiers de la population en 2050. Une telle evolution amenera lʼexpression de besoins specifiques, qui impliqueront un effort dʼadaptation sociale et scientifique sans precedent. Cet article met dʼabord en evidence le caractere plurifactoriel et multidimensionnel du vieillissement, puis identifie ses differents determinants (perceptifs, attentionnels, mnesiques, moteurs, etc.) et presente les differents modeles permettant dʼaborder les questions liees aux effets du vieillissement. Ensuite, nous montrons lʼimportance de la pratique et de lʼexperience en tant que facteurs susceptibles de reguler ou dʼattenuer les alterations liees au vieillissement. Enfin, les differents modeles permettant de comprendre les effets de la pratique sur le vieillissement sont abordes.

International audience; Can elderly adults automatize a new task? To address this question, 10 older adults each performed 10,080 training trials over 12 sessions on an easy but novel task. The psychological refractory period (PRP) procedure was then used to evaluate whether this highly practiced task, when presented as task 2 along with an unpracticed task 1, could proceed automatically. If automatic, task 2 processing should bypass the bottleneck and, therefore, not be delayed while central attention is devoted to task 1, yielding little dual-task interference. This is exactly what Maquestiaux, Laguë-Beauvais, Ruthruff, and Bherer (Memory and Cognition 36:1262-1282, 2008) previously observed for almost all younger adults, even with half the training on a more difficult task. Although extensive training reduced older adults' reaction times to only 307 ms, a value virtually identical to that attained by Maquestiaux et al.'s (Memory and Cognition 36:1262-1282, 2008) younger adults, the highly practiced task 2 was slowed by 485 ms in the dual-task PRP procedure. Such a large slowing in older adults is striking given the easy tasks and massive amounts of practice. These findings demonstrate a qualitative change with age, in which older adults lose the ability to automatize novel tasks, which cannot be attributed merely to generalized cognitive slowing.

International audience; Offline verbalization about a new motor experience is often assumed to positively influence subsequent performance. Here, we evaluated this presumed positive influence and whether it originates from declarative or from procedural knowledge using the explicit/implicit motor-learning paradigm. To this end, 80 nongolfers learned to perform a golf-putting task with high error rates (i.e., explicit motor learning), and thus relied on declarative knowledge, or low error rates (i.e., implicit motor learning), and thus relied on procedural knowledge. Afterward, they either put their memories of the previous motor experience into words or completed an irrelevant verbal task. Finally, they performed the putting task again. Verbalization did not improve novice motor performance: Putting was impaired, overall, and especially so for high-error learners. We conclude that declarative knowledge is altered by verbalization, whereas procedural knowledge is not.

Does normal aging inexorably lead to diminished motor learning abilities? This article provides an overview of the literature on the question, with particular emphasis on the functional dissociation between two sets of memory processes: declarative, effortful processes, and non-declarative, automatic processes. There is abundant evidence suggesting that aging does impair learning when past memories of former actions are required (episodic memory) and recollected through controlled processing (working memory). However, other studies have shown that aging does not impair learning when motor actions are performed non verbally and automatically (tapping procedural memory). These findings led us to hypothesize that one can minimize the impact of aging on the ability to learn new motor actions by favouring procedural learning. Recent data validating this hypothesis are presented. Our findings underline the importance of developing new motor learning strategies, which "bypass" declarative, effortful memory processes.

Can motor learning be equivalent in younger and older adults? To address this question, 48 younger ( M = 23.5 years) and 48 older ( M = 65.0 years) participants learned to perform a golf-putting task in two different motor learning situations: one that resulted in infrequent errors or one that resulted in frequent errors. The results demonstrated that infrequent-error learning predominantly relied on nondeclarative, automatic memory processes whereas frequent-error learning predominantly relied on declarative, effortful memory processes: After learning, infrequent-error learners verbalized fewer strategies than frequent-error learners; at transfer, a concurrent, attention-demanding secondary task (tone counting) left motor performance of infrequent-error learners unaffected but impaired that of frequent-error learners. The results showed age-equivalent motor performance in infrequent-error learning but age deficits in frequent-error learning. Motor performance of frequent-error learners required more attention with age, as evidenced by an age deficit on the attention-demanding secondary task. The disappearance of age effects when nondeclarative, automatic memory processes predominated suggests that these processes are preserved with age and are available even early in motor learning.

International audience; Highly efficient dual-task processing is demonstrated when reaction time to each of two tasks does not differ between the dual-task situation and the single-task situation. This has been demonstrated reliably in younger adults; nevertheless, the two extant studies of extensive dual-task training did not find evidence for it in any elderly adult. The origins of age-related differences after training were explored in a study in which the stimuli for the two tasks were perfectly redundant although two distinct responses were required. The dual-task situation thus greatly reduced the demands of stimulus categorization while still requiring two response selections and two response executions. After only limited training 8 of 8 younger adults and 5 of 8 older adults showed performance consistent with highly efficient processing. Three older adults failed to show this even after 12 training sessions. The results implicate stimulus categorization more than response selection as an important locus of inefficient dual-task processing, particularly for older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).

This study assessed the relationship between cardiovascular fitness and temporal preparation in elderly persons. 110 older adults (aged 60--69 or 70--79 years) were sorted into low- and high-fit groups based on aerobic fitness level estimated with a walking test. Response preparation processes were assessed with reaction time tasks in which short (1, 3, 5 s) and long (5, 7, 9 s) preparatory intervals varied randomly. The results suggest a better ability in high-fit individuals to maintain preparation over time (up to 9 s). Results of the present study suggest that in older adults, a high level of aerobic fitness is associated with more efficient response preparation processes. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.

International audience; Dual-task processing was explored in younger and older adults in 2 experiments that used a tone discrimination and a letter discrimination task. To encourage parallel processing if that was possible, the authors presented the stimuli for the 2 tasks simultaneously, and participants were instructed to withhold their responses until both were ready. The authors found no evidence for parallel processing and no evidence that the management of central processing of dual tasks is qualitatively different in older adults than it is in younger adults. When one response was verbal and the other manual, the 2 responses closely coincided. When both responses were manual, the authors did find that the first response was not delayed enough to coincide with the 2nd and that this underestimation was greater in older adults.

International audience; Can dual-task practice remove age-related differences in the psychological refractory period (PRP) effect? To answer this question, younger and older individuals practiced 7 blocks of a PRP design, in which Task 1 (T1) required a vocal response to an auditory stimulus and Task 2 (T2) required a manual response to a visual stimulus (Experiment 1). The results showed that practice did not reduce, but rather increased, age-related differences in PRP interference. Using the trained individuals, the introduction of a less complex new T1 (Experiment 2) or a less complex new T2 (Experiment 3) with the task previously practiced reduced the PRP interference but only in older adults. The authors propose that older adults suffer from a large task-switch cost that is more sensitive to task complexity than to the amount of practice.