Relationships Between Strategy Switching and Strategy Switch Costs in Young and Older Adults: A Study in Arithmetic Problem Solving

Abstract

Background/Study Context: This study investigated age-related differences in within-item strategy switching (i.e., revising initial strategy choices to select a better strategy while solving a given problem) and in strategy switch costs (i.e., longer latencies when participants switch strategies than when they do not switch strategy during strategy execution).Methods: In a computational estimation task, participants had to give approximate products to two-digit multiplication problems (e.g., 41 × 67) while rounding up (i.e., do 50 × 70 for 41 × 67) or rounding down (i.e., do 40 × 60 for 41 × 67) operands to their nearest decades. After executing a cued strategy during 1000 ms, participants had the possibility to switch to another strategy (or repeat the same strategy) in a selection condition. In an execution condition, participants were forced to repeat the same strategy or to switch to another strategy.Results: It was found that (1) older adults were less able than young adults to switch strategy after starting to execute a cued strategy (36.1% vs. 45.8%); (2) older adults showed larger switch costs than young adults (422 vs. 223 ms); and (3) strategy switches and strategy switch costs correlated in older adults but not in young adults.Conclusion: These findings have important implications for our understanding of the mechanisms underlying within-item strategy switching and aging effects on these mechanisms as well as, more generally, of strategic variations during cognitive aging.