AGING, COMPLEXITY, AND EFFICICIENCY MODES – p. 1Running head: AGING, COMPLEXITY, AND EFFICICIENCY MODESAging, task complexity, and efficiency modes: The influence of working memory involvementon age differences in response times for verbal and visuospatial tasksPaul Verhaeghen, John Cerella, and Chandramallika Basak Syracuse University(in press, Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition)

AGING, COMPLEXITY, AND EFFICICIENCY MODES – p. 2AbstractWe examined the information-processing functions (response-time x load) of younger and older adults for two verbal and one visuo-spatial task; each task was implemented in a baseline and ahigh-complexity condition. Heightened complexity transformed the baseline functions in either an additive or a multiplicative fashion. The processing efficiency of older adults was defined asthe old-young ratio of the slopes of the load functions. Three levels of efficiency could bedistinguished. The first level, with an age-related slowing factor of about 1.2, consisted of low-complexity verbal processing and additive-complexity verbal processing. The second level,associated with a slowing factor of about 1.6, consisted of a mixture of verbal-high-multiplicative-complexity processing and visuo-spatial-low-complexity processing. The thirdlevel, with a slowing factor of about 4, consisted of visuo-spatial processing of highmultiplicative complexity. The results go against any common-factor theory of aging. Instead,they suggest that a shift from a higher to a lower mode of efficiency is triggered by a greater degree of working memory involvement.

AGING, COMPLEXITY, AND EFFICICIENCY MODES – p. 3Aging, task complexity, and efficiency modes: The influence of working memory involvementon age differences in response times for verbal and visuospatial tasksOne key question in the study of cognitive aging is the number of theoretical factors necessary toexplain the observed deficits. Although there is no doubt that age differences in cognition aremany and diverse (see Kausler, 1991, and Salthouse, 1991, for an enumeration of deficits raisedin the literature), one of the striking results from the past quarter century of cognitive agingresearch is how much regularity can be detected amid the large variety of data. In fact,correlational research in the 1990s has led to a theoretical account of aging as governed by asingle mechanism, identified as either processing speed (e.g., Salthouse, 1996), theneuromodulation effects underlying it (Braver & Barch, 2002; Li, Lindenberger, & French,2000), or even a common cause linking cognitive change to perceptual/motor processes (e.g.,Lindenberger & Baltes, 1997).Logically, correlated change in cognitive aging is to be expected if any of the followingthree scenarios are true. A: The cognitive system breaks down in a global fashion in allindividuals (but not necessarily at identical rates). Under this scenario, change in one abilitywould be highly correlated with change in another, because they indeed change together. B: Thecognitive system breaks down randomly. In scenario B, some components become defectiveearlier than others, but which components break down is a matter of chance (Gavrilov &Gavrilova, 1991). When averaged at the group level, the random factor leads to perceived globalchanges in cognitive functioning. C: The cognitive system breaks down along predictable lines(called ‘dissociations’ by Perfect & Maylor, 2000). Under scenario C, we expect correlatedchange within each of the levels of dissociation. (One such dissociation that has beeninvestigated extensively is that between lexical/verbal tasks and visuospatial tasks – the former yielding smaller age-related declines (e.g., Myerson & Hale, 1993)).