Age-related deficits in the congruency sequence effect are task-specific: An investigation of nine tasks.

Abstract

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).