Journal of Experimental Psychology:

Human Perception and Performance Copyright 1 y the American Psychological Association, Inc.
1988, Vol. 14, No. 2, 267-280 0096-1523/88/S00.75

Effects of Aging and Task Difficulty on Divided Attention

Performance
Joan M. McDowd and Fergus I. M. Craik
Erindale College, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

We report two experiments that compare the performance of young and older adults on
perceptual-motor tasks involving division of attention. Previous studies have shown older people
to be especially penalized by divided attention situations, but the generality of this finding was
recently challenged by Somberg and Salthouse (1982). The present study was conducted to
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investigate the possibility that age differences in dual-task performance are amplified by an
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increase in the difficulty of the constituent tasks, where difficulty was manipulated by varying
the central, cognitive nature of the tasks (Experiment 1) or the degree of choice involved
(Experiment 2). With the present tasks, strong evidence was found for an age-related decrement
in divided attention performance. Contrary to our original expectations, however, it does not
seem that division of attention presents some especial difficulty to older people. Rather, division
of attention is one of several equivalent ways to increase overall task complexity. In turn, age
differences are exaggerated as tasks are made more complex.

There is an extensive body of literature documenting the
changes in cognitive abilities that come with increasing age in
adulthood (see Kausler, 1982, and Salthouse, 1982, for re-
views). One such change that has been demonstrated in many
experimental studies is the poorer performance of older adults
in situations that require division of attention (Broadbent &
Gregory, 1965; Broadbent & Heron, 1962; Inglis & Caird,
1963; Kirchner, 1958; Welford, 1958). On the basis of this
literature, Craik (1977) stated that "one of the clearest results
in the experimental psychology of aging is the finding that
older adults are more penalized when they must divide their
attention" (p. 391).
The reasons for the older person's greater difficulty in
performing two concurrent mental tasks are not clear. One
suggestion is in terms of decreased "functional distance"
between the regions responsible for the two sets of mental
operations in the older brain (Kinsbourne, 1980); the idea is
that the necessary operations show a greater tendency to
mutual interference in older people. A second type of expla-
nation appeals to information-handling limitations in older
adults. For example, Welford (1958, 1977) has postulated a
decline in short-term memory capacity, "especially when
attention has to be switched to other data or action during
the period of retention" (Welford, 1958, p. 484). This rela-
tively active view of short-term storage is similar to the notion
of working memory, which, according to Baddeley and Hitch
(1974), consists of a limited capacity "work space" that can
be divided between storage and control processing demands.
This research was supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences
and Engineering Council of Canada to F. I. M. Craik and by funds
from the Program in Gerontology, University of Toronto.
We wish to thank Lily Moysiuk for technical help, and we are
grateful to the reviewers for useful suggestions.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Joan M. McDowd, who is now at the Department of Psychology,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089.
When two tasks must be performed concurrently, older people
may perform less well than their younger counterparts because
of decreased storage capacity or less flexible deployment of
control processing. A further possibility is that the processes
controlling the division of attention may require more "pro-
gram space" in older people, leaving fewer processing re-
sources to carry out the tasks themselves (Craik, 1973, 1977).
However, the need for such speculations was called into
question by the arguments and findings of Somberg and
Salthouse (1982). These authors questioned the validity of the
existing evidence for an age decrement in divided attention
performance on methodological grounds and presented two
new experiments in which older adults were found to be at
no more of a disadvantage under divided attention conditions
than were younger adults. Their objections to previous work
included the point that many of the studies on which the
original conclusion was based used the dichotic listening
paradigm—a wider selection of tasks would be preferable.
Somberg and Salthouse also commented on a frequent failure
to report single-task measures on the tasks studied and a
failure to take age differences in single-task performance into
account.
The studies reported by Somberg and Salthouse (1982)
were designed to overcome these limitations. In the first
experiment, subjects detected the presence of a target on each
of two simultaneously presented visual displays. Age differ-
ences on single-task detection performance were eliminated
by adjusting the presentation duration of the visual displays
for each subject so that detection accuracy was 80%-90% on
each display. Under these conditions, no age differences were
observed when attention was divided between the displays. In
the second experiment, speed of response rather than accuracy
was examined. The tasks were (a) simple reaction time (RT)
to an auditory signal and (b) repetitive keying of a constant
seven-digit sequence. Subjects performed each task alone and
also performed the two tasks simultaneously, entering the
digit sequence on a keyboard with the right hand while

267
 268 JOAN M. McDOWD AND FERGUS I. M. CRAIK
responding to the auditory signals with the left hand. For each
task, the interaction between age and single/dual-task per-
formance was statistically reliable, showing that the older
subjects were penalized more than were young subjects by
dual-task conditions. Previous workers have typically taken
this type of evidence to indicate age differences in divided
attention. However, Somberg and Salthouse argued that be-
cause there are substantial age differences even under single-
task conditions, the proper way to evaluate the effect of
divided attention is to express the increases in RT associated
with dual-task performance as a ratio of single-task RTs.
When the data of their second study were expressed in terms
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of these relative divided attention costs, age differences in
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performance disappeared. The problem of different baselines
in developmental research is a difficult one, and the solutions
adopted by Somberg and Salthouse are probably as reasonable
as any. The ratio measure is certainly a very conservative one,
however, and it is possible that data transformed in this way
overcompensate for baseline differences (Ackerman, Schnei-
der, & Wickens, 1984).
In any event, Somberg and Salthouse's (1982) findings of
either small age differences or no age differences in divided
attention performance are clearly at odds with results of
previous studies. One possibility is that their methodological
improvements revealed the true state of affairs, but a second
possibility is that the tasks used by Somberg and Salthouse
required relatively shallow (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) or au-
tomatic (Hasher & Zacks, 1979) processing. The literature is
consistent in showing (a) that age decrements in performance
are greater in tasks requiring more complex translation proc-
esses between perception and action (Welford, 1958) and (b)
that older people are particularly penalized when the com-
plexity involves substantial central as opposed to peripheral
processing (Cerella, Poon, & Williams, 1980).
The possibility that age differences in divided attention
performance can be affected by the tasks involved is given
some credibility by the results of two experiments reported
by Craik (1973) and discussed by Kausler (1982). In the first
experiment, subjects attempted to detect a faint tone on one
auditory channel while performing a short-term recognition
memory task for digits on a second auditory channel; the age
decrement in divided attention performance was slight. How-
ever, the age decrement was substantially greater in the second
experiment, in which subjects performed a visual short-term
memory task for letters while monitoring a lengthy string of
digits (presented auditorily) for the presence of targets, defined
as three consecutive odd digits (e.g., 391, 537). It is at least
reasonable to argue that the second set of tasks involved more
central, cognitive processing than did the first.
Salthouse, Rogan, and Prill (1984) also reported age differ-
ences under conditions of divided attention when the tasks
were more complex than those used by Somberg and Salt-
house (1982). In the later study, Salthouse et al. presented
subjects with two simultaneously displayed lists of letters and
digits, respectively, for short-term recall. The difficulty level
was equated across subjects by presenting each person with
strings that were 75% of that person's span for the material
(digits or letters) presented alone. Salthouse el al. suggested
that the difference between their results and those of Somberg
and Salthouse might be due to differences in the complexity
of the tasks used, with complexity defined as the number of
hypothesized mental operations required. They further sug-
gested that age differences emerge when the overall complexity
of the situation is high or when demands on processing
capacity are great—"the larger the number of mental opera-
tions to be performed, the larger is the absolute age difference
between young and older adults" (Salthouse et al., 1984, p.
619). This line of reasoning echoes an earlier suggestion by
Salthouse (1982) that division of attention does not represent
some special circumstance but is just one of many cases in
which overall complexity is high.
It is therefore likely that the effects observed in many dual-task
situations are no different than those that would be obtained
when task difficulty or complexity is manipulated in a single
task. This argument thus suggests that the requirement of per-
forming two concurrent tasks is simply another means of increas-
ing task complexity, and that there may not be a specific age
deficit associated with divided attention, per se. (Salthouse, 1982,
p. 189)
The present studies were undertaken to gather further in-
formation on age differences in performance under conditions
of divided attention and, in particular, to examine the notion
that age-related decrements in divided attention performance
increase as the difficulty and complexity of the component
tasks increase. In Experiment 1, difficulty was manipulated
qualitatively by using tasks that involved either shallow sen-
sory-motor decisions or deeper cognitive decisions. In Exper-
iment 2, task difficulty was again varied qualitatively, but
complexity was also varied quantitatively by using tasks re-
quiring two-choice, four-choice, or eight-choice decisions. The
points at issue were, first, a further exploration of the condi-
tions under which age differences in divided attention per-
formance are observed; second, an investigation of the sug-
gestion that age decrements in this situation are amplified as
the complexity of the component tasks is increased; and third,
an examination of Salthouse's (1982) suggestion that division
of attention simply represents one case in which overall
complexity is high.
Experiment 1
The purpose of Experiment 1 was to explore the notion
suggested by Craik (1973) that division of attention is more
disruptive to performance in subjects of all ages when the
component tasks involve relatively deep cognitive processing
than when they involve shallow sensory-motor processing;
further, that the age-related decrement in performance is
amplified by tasks that require deeper processing. Although
depth of processing cannot be measured precisely at this time,
the results of many studies show strong effects of the variable
on aspects of memory and attention (Craik & Tulving, 1975;
Dark, Johnston, Myles-Worsley, & Farah, 1985; Hyde &
Jenkins, 1969; Johnston & Heinz, 1978; Treisman, 1964,
1969). Depth of processing, therefore, seems to be a dimension
of some psychological importance.
The present study involved two visual tasks and two audi-
tory tasks. In line with previous studies (e.g., Craik & Tulving,
1975), the two tasks within each modality involved the same
 AGING, TASK DIFFICULTY, AND DIVIDED ATTENTION
stimuli and the same responses, but the qualitative nature of
the stimulus-response (S-R) mapping differed between the
members of each pair of tasks, so that one task required only
superficial sensory processing, whereas the other required
deeper, cognitive processing. To keep the exposition theoret-
ically neutral, the two members of each pair of tasks are
designated easy and difficult, respectively. Subjects performed
each of the four tasks alone and also in the four dual-task
combinations made possible by combining one visual with
one auditory task (easy/visual-easy/auditory . . . difficult/
visual-difficult/auditory). We predicted that the difficulty of
dual-task performance, relative to performance on the com-
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ponent tasks performed singly, would increase from the easy-
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easy combination to the difficult-difficult combination, with
the other two combinations yielding intermediate results. We
also predicted that this ordering of dual-task combinations
would be more disruptive to the performance of older subjects
than to the performance of their younger counterparts.
Method
Subjects
Sixteen young and 16 older adults participated in the experiment.
The young adults (Jl/age = 19.4 years; SD = 1.1 year) were under-
graduates at Erindale College, University of Toronto, and received
course credit for their participation. The older adults (M age = 69.0
years; SD = 5.6 years), were home-living volunteers in good health
who came to the laboratory to be tested; they received travel expenses
but no payment for their services. All subjects were given the Mill
Hill vocabulary test, a six-alternative, forced-choice, synonym-rec-
ognition test with a total possible score of 20. Scores on vocabulary
tests hold up or even increase somewhat with increasing age (Heron
& Chown, 1967; Salthouse, 1982). Performance on such tests is
therefore often used to match different age groups on verbal ability,
inasmuch as verbal abilities relate to other types of cognitive perform-
ance. In the present study, vocabulary scores were 12.3 (SD = 2.3)
and 15.7 (SD = 2.7) for the young and older groups, respectively—a
significant superiority for the older group, £(30) = 4.06. p < .01. If
anything, the older group had higher verbal abilities, and thus any
age-related deficits found in task performance are likely to underes-
timate the true state of affairs.
Tasks
Auditory tasks. On each trial of both versions of the auditory task,
the subject monitored a list of 12 words for the presence of targets.
In the easy (or shallow) version, 9 of the 12 words were spoken in a
male voice, whereas the 3 target words were spoken in a female voice.
The subject's task was simply to press a response key each time a
target word was detected. The serial positions of target words were
randomly assigned for each list, with the restriction that no two
targets were presented in adjacent serial positions. Fourteen such lists
were prerecorded on tape at a rate of one word per 2 s and were
presented to subjects via headphones. This easy version of the audi-
tory task is referred to as the voice task.
In the difficult (or deep) version, 14 lists of 12 words were also
presented, but the subject's task was to detect words denoting living
things. In this category task, all words were spoken by a male speaker
at the same rate as in the easy task (one word per 2 s). As in the easy
version, the words were all two-syllable nouns, and 3 of the 12 words
269
were targets, semirandomly positioned within each sequence. Again,
the subject's task was to press a key each time a target was detected;
nontargets received no response. Reaction times on both tasks were
measured with a millisecond timer that was triggered by an electronic
signal on the second channel of the magnetic tape recorded to be
coincident with the onset of the target word. The timer was stopped
by the subject's keypress, and the RT was recorded by the experimen-
ter.
Visual tasks. Both visual tasks involved the same computer-gen-
erated display. This display was a 3-cm x 7-cm rectangle presented
with its longer side on the horizontal axis. The rectangle was divided
with vertical lines into four sections of equal size, and on each trial
an alphanumeric character appeared in one of the four sections. On
one half of the trials the character was a number, and on the other
half of the trials the character was a letter of the alphabet. Of the
trials that were numbers, half were odd digits and half were even
digits. Of the trials that were letters, half were vowels and half were
consonants. The nature of the character and its location within the
rectangle varied randomly, with equal numbers of item types appear-
ing in each position.
For both versions of the visual task, there were four response keys.
In the easy (shallow) version, the subject pressed the key correspond-
ing to the position of each alphanumeric character as it appeared in
one of the four sections of the rectangle. That is, the correct response
did not depend on the type of character displayed; position was the
only important variable. The stimulus-response mapping was
straightforward; that is, the correct response to a character in the left-
most section of the display was to press the leftmost key, and so on.
For the difficult (deep) visual task, each of the four response keys
was assigned one of the following labels: vowel, consonant, odd digit,
or even digit. In this case, the subject's task was to identify the
character that appeared on the screen (regardless of its position within
the rectangle) and press the key corresponding to the appropriate
category to which the character belonged. This task is referred to as
the character task. For both versions of the visual task, the stimulus
display stayed on the screen until the subject made a response. A
correct response caused a new character to appear immediately—
thus, the tasks were of the continuous reaction time (CRT) type. If
the subject made an incorrect response, the same display was repeated
until a correct response was made; in this case, the subject's RT was
cumulated until the correct key was pressed. Errors were thus reflected
in lengthened RTs. In both versions, subjects performed the task
continuously for a 24-s period, and the measure taken was the mean
correct response time.
Procedure
Subjects were seated in front of a computer screen and informed
that they would be performing two tasks—one in response to visual
stimuli and one in response to auditory stimuli. Because there were
two tasks in each presentation mode, there were four dual-task
combinations: voice-position, voice-character, category-position,
and category-character. Each subject performed one block of trials
under each of the four combinations, and the order of task conditions
was counterbalanced across subjects.
Within each block, the appropriate visual task was explained first
and the subject given one practice sequence of 15 stimulus-response
(S-R) events. This practice was followed by a scored 24-s sequence
(this sequence was of approximately equal length to the time taken
to presept one 12-word list in the auditory task). The 24-s visual
sequence gave the subject's score for the visual task performed alone.
Instructions for the appropriate auditory task were then given, and a
practice trial was performed. Next, the subject was given one practice
sequence, with both tasks performed concurrently. Finally, three
 270 JOAN M. McDOWD AND FERGUS I. M. CRAIK

scored dual-task sequences and two scored single-task auditory lists
were presented; the order of these five experimental sequences was
randomized separately for each subject in each block.
This procedure was repeated for each of the four task combination
blocks. A 30-s rest period was provided between each block. In the
dual-task conditions, subjects were instructed to divide their attention
equally between the two tasks.
Results
Errors
Given the design of the visual tasks, in which a given display
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Reaction Times
Table 2 shows mean RTs for the two age groups on the
four tasks performed singly and in the appropriate combina-
tions. Table 2 shows longer reaction times for the older group
for tasks carried out in combination, as opposed to alone, and
for the difficult tasks—both the task on which the RT was
measured and when that task was combined with a difficult
task.
Single-task performance. Focusing first on the RTs for each
task performed alone, Table 2 shows that for both the auditory
and visual tasks, the more difficult (deeper) task took longer
to perform. Analyses of variance (ANOVAS) were carried out

was presented until the subject made a correct response to it,

within each modality. In the case of the visual tasks, there
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the only errors recorded in the present experiment were errors

was a significant effect of difficulty, F(l, 30) = 145.3, p <
of omission (misses) in the auditory tasks. Essentially no errors
.001; an effect of age, F(l, 30) = 52.2, p < .002; and a
were made in the single-task conditions (a total of 7 errors for
significant Age x Difficulty interaction, F(l, 30) = 5.66, p <
the older group and 1 error for the young group). However,
.05. For the auditory tasks, the effect of difficulty was again
under divided attention conditions a number of errors were
reliable, F([, 30) = 360.7, p < .001; the effect of age was
made by both age groups; the group totals and percentages
marginally significant, F(l, 30) = 3.83, p < .06; but the Age
are shown in Table 1. The table shows that more errors were
x Difficulty interaction did not approach significance, F <
made in the deeper category task and that older subjects made
1.0. Some caution should be exercised in interpreting the
relatively more errors in this condition.
increase in RTs from the easy auditory task (voice) to the
Because so few errors were made on the auditory task, no
difficult auditory task (category); the nature of the tasks simply
formal statistical analysis was carried out on the error data.
necessitates a longer sample of the word in the latter case, in
However, two points may be made from the pattern of data
which it must be decided whether the word denotes a living
in Table 1. First, RTs were the major dependent variable in
thing, than in the former case, in which the sex of the speakers
the experiment, and because older subjects made more errors,
is judged. Thus, whereas we continue to refer to the category
presumably the recorded RTs for the older group underesti-
task as being more difficult than the voice task (in the sense
mate the values that would have been found if error rates had
that the category task necessitates more central processing), it
been equated across the two age groups. That is, speed-
seems certain that the increase in RT cannot all be attributed
accuracy trade-off considerations make it likely that if error
to an increased difficulty of processing in the category task.
rates had been equated between the age groups, the RTs for
However, the primary interest lies in how RTs on these tasks
older subjects would have been higher. As we shall see, this
changed when they were performed in combination.
would have further amplified the effects actually found. Sec-
Dual-task performance. There are various ways in which
ond, Table 1 shows that both older and young subjects made
the dual-task data may be displayed and analyzed. The major
few errors in the relatively shallow voices task but that the age
point at issue is whether older adults are differentially penal-
decrement was substantial in the deeper category task. This
pattern of results is exactly that discussed speculatively early
in the article, that older subjects may not be differentially Table 2
penalized in divided attention conditions when the tasks are Mean Reaction Time (in Milliseconds) as a Function of Age,
relatively automatic and require little analysis (e.g., Somberg Task, and Task Combination
& Salthouse, 1982) but that an age decrement in divided Task and group Alone Easy Difficult
attention does emerge when more cognitive tasks are used.
Visual tasks
(with voice) (with category)

Table 1 Position (easy)

Old 632 782 878
Total Errors and Percentage Errors on the Auditory Tasks
Young 409 435 450
for Young and Older Adults in Experiment 1 Character (difficult)
Young group Older group Old 1108 1462 1721
Young 728 805 967
Condition Total % Total %
Voice Auditory tasks
(with position) (with character)
Alone 0 0.0 0 0.0
Position 1 0.7 0 0.0 Voice (easy)
Character 2 1.4 4 2.8 Old 372 649 973
Category Young 318 478 589
Alone 1 0.7 7 7.3 Category (difficult)
Position 6 4.2 15 10.4 Old 734 1066 1413
Character 7 4.9 25 17.4 Young 694 799 1004
 AGING, TASK DIFFICULTY, AND DIVIDED ATTENTION
ized in situations involving division of attention when tasks
demanding moderate cognitive involvement are used, and
further, whether the age-related decrement in division of
attention is increased when task difficulty is increased. Figures
1 and 2 shed light on these questions by showing single- and
dual-task performance for each age group and in each of the
four task combinations. Note that the single-task data are
necessarily repeated; for example, the values for the position
task performed alone are the same in the position-voice and
position-category combinations. The figures show clearly that
older subjects were penalized more by the shift from single-
to dual-task conditions and that the size of this Age x Single/
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Dual-Task interaction is amplified by the use of more difficult
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tasks. This statement is confirmed by the results of an analysis
of variance (ANOVA) on the combined data from the two
figures; only the major results of interest are reported. The
interaction between age and single/dual-task performance was
reliable, F(l, 30) = 22.2, p < .001, showing that the require-
ment of divided attention was more detrimental to the per-
formance of older adults than to that of young adults. The
three-way interaction between age, single/dual, and task com-
bination was also significant, F(3, 90) = 4.04, p < .01. The
significant three-way interaction shows that the age decrement
in divided attention is itself affected by the tasks involved.
Both figures show a tendency for the age decrement to be
exacerbated as the component tasks increased in difficulty.
The four-way interaction between age, single/dual-task per-
formance, task combination, and modality, was not signifi-
cant (F< 1.0).
Factors contributing to the age decrement in divided atten-
tion may be further specified by looking at divided attention
costs, and it is to these derived data that we now turn.
1600
VOICE
I POSITION) (CHARACTER)
1300
1 100 •
500
SINGLE DUAL SINGLE
Figure 1. Reaction times for the two auditory tasks (voice and category) as a function of age, single or
dual task condition, and task combination.
271
Absolute divided attention (DA) costs. In Salthouse's ter-
minology, the absolute DA cost for a given task is simply the
amount by which mean RT increased from single- to dual-
task conditions. These difference scores are presented in Table
3. In Table 3, the target task is the one for which the measures
are given, and the shared task is the task it was combined
with in that condition. Table 3 shows that divided attention
costs are higher for the older group in all conditions; this
contrast is equivalent to the Age x Single/Dual interaction in
the previous analysis. In addition, the layout of the data in
Table 3 enables us to determine whether age differences in
DA costs are affected by the difficulty of the task being
measured and also whether age differences in DA costs are
affected by combining the target task with a more difficult
shared task.
To assess these effects, a 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 (Age x Modality x
Difficulty of Target Task x Difficulty of Shared Task) ANOVA
was carried out on the data in Table 3. The four main effects
were all highly reliable (p < .01). Of greater interest, the
interactions of age with both target task difficulty, F( 1, 30) =
5.07, p < .03, and with shared task difficulty, F(l, 30) = 5.64,
p < .03, were reliable, and neither interaction was qualified
by significant higher order interactions. Thus, we can con-
clude that the age decrement in divided attention performance
(given here by DA costs) was amplified reliably both by
increasing the difficulty of the task being performed and by
increasing the difficulty of the concurrent task.
The data may be further condensed by calculating the
average DA cost for each pair of combined tasks. For example,
the mean cost for the position-voice combination in the
young group is (26 + 160)/2 = 93 ms; for the character-voice
combination in the young group, the average DA cost is (77
AUDITORY TASKS
VOICE CATEGORY CATEGORY
(POSITION)
DUAL SINGLE DUAL SINGLE DUAL
TASK CONDITION
 272 JOAN M. McDOWD AND FERGUS I. M. CRAIK.

VISUAL TASKS

POSITION CHARACTER CHARACTER

1700 (CATEGORY) (VOICE)

1500

— 1300
o
s
£ 1100

9
K °°
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700
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500
____ -o
-

300
SINGLE DUAL SINGLE DUAL SINGLE DUAL SINGLE DUAL

TASK CONDITION

Figure 2. Reaction times for the two visual tasks (position and character) as a function of age, single
or dual task condition, and task combination.

+ 271 )/2 = 1 7 4 ms. One can argue strongly for averaging DA
costs over the two component tasks in that if the subject
chooses to concentrate more heavily on one or the other task,
the DA cost will simply be increased on the less attended task.
The subject cannot lessen the total DA cost by using a strategy.
The means for each age group and task combination are
shown in Table 4 under absolute DA costs.
In line with the original predictions, the absolute DA cost
figures in Table 4 increase in general from the combination
of the two easy tasks (position-voice) to the combination of
the two difficult tasks (character-category). The older group
shows greater DA costs and, crucially, the age difference is
amplified by the increasing difficulty of task combination. An
ANOVA on these data yielded significant effects of age, F(l,
30) = 22.76, p < .001; task combination, F\l, 90) = 29.86, p
< .001; and the Age x Task Combination interaction, F(3,
90) = 4.49,p<.01.
It is possible that the absolute DA cost measure gives a
misleading picture of age differences, however, because the
baseline levels are substantially higher for the older group (see
task-alone data, Table 2). Accordingly, Somberg and Salt-
house (1982) suggested that relative DA cost was the more
appropriate measure; this figure is calculated by expressing
each of the absolute DA costs as a proportion of average
single-task performance on the two component tasks. For
example, single-task RTs for young subjects in the position-
voice combination were 409 and 318 ms, respectively; there-
fore, relative DA costs were 93 / 1/2(409 + 318) = 0.26.
Values for both age groups in all four task combinations are
shown in Table 4 under relative DA costs. Table 4 shows that
the values for relative DA costs were substantially higher for
the older group than for the young group in all cases. An
ANOVA on the data yielded a significant effect of age, F(l, 30)
= 12.96,p< .001, and task combination, F(3, 30) = 13.12,p
< .001. The interaction between age and task combination
was not significant, however, F(3, 90) = 1.07. There is some
indication from Table 4 that the easiest task combination
(position/voice) was associated with a smaller age difference
in relative DA costs than the other combinations, but because

Table 3
Mean Absolute Divided Attention Costs (in Milliseconds) as Table 4
a Function of Age and Task Combination in Experiment 1 Mean Divided Attention Costs as a Function of Age and
Target Task Task Combination in Experiment 1
Visual Auditory Position Character
DA costs and
Easy Difficult Easy Difficult group Voice Category Voice Category
Shared task (position) (character) (voice) (category)
Absolute
Young Young 93 73 174 275
Easy 26 77 160 105 Old 214 289 478 646
Difficult 41 239 271 310 Relative
Old Young .26 .13 .33 .39
Easy 150 354 277 332 Old .43 .42 .65 .70
Difficult 246 613 601 679 Note. DA = divided attention.
 AGING, TASK DIFFICULTY, AND DIVIDED ATTENTION 273

the interaction was not significant, we should conclude that

the lower costs for the younger group were relatively constant
across all conditions.
To summarize, the results of all analyses are clear in show-
ing that the increased difficulty (as indexed by RTs) associated
with performing perceptual-motor tasks under divided atten-
tion as compared with focused attention conditions is affected
by the nature of the tasks themselves. Tasks that necessitate
deeper cognitive processing are more negatively affected, even
when ratio measures are taken (relative DA costs, Table 4).
The data are also clear in showing that older people are
relatively more penalized by division of attention—again, this
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is true for both absolute and relative measures. There is some

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ambiguity, however, surrounding the question of whether task

difficulty further exacerbates this age-related decrement;
analysis of the absolute DA cost data suggests that it does,
whereas the relative DA cost data suggest that it does not.

Divided Attention and Complexity

Salthouse (1982) made the interesting suggestion that divi-

sion of attention simply acts to increase the overall complexity
of the situation, thereby necessitating the involvement of more
mental operations. With respect to the effects of aging, it may
be the case that the observed age decrement in performance
would therefore be as great in a single complex task as in two
shared tasks. The alternative possibility is that there is some-
thing about the divided attention situation itself that is espe-
cially difficult for the older person to handle.
One way in which the present data may be examined in
order to address this issue is to plot mean young RTs against
mean older RTs for the various tasks (Salthouse, 1978). In
the case of tasks performed singly, we would expect that as
more complex tasks are considered, RTs go up for both age
groups. Furthermore, it is suggested in previous work (Cerella
et al., 1980) that the complexity function is reasonably linear,
with a slope greater than 1.0. That is, for a given increase in
RT for a group of young subjects, as tasks increase in com-
plexity, there will be a correspondingly greater increase in
RTs for the older group. The question of interest is what
happens when tasks performed under divided attention con-
ditions are added to this plot. If divided attention acts simply
to increase complexity, then the further points should lie on
the same function; however, if divided attention has some
especially disruptive effect on older people, these further
points would be expected to form a different function with a
higher slope or higher intercept than the first.
The data from the present study are shown plotted in this
way in Figure 3. Separate regression equations were calculated
for single- and dual-task data. For single task, the slope and
intercept were 1.31 and 10.2, respectively; for dual task, the
slope and intercept were 1.46 and 111.6, respectively. Com-
parisons of slopes and intercepts across task conditions indi-
cated that neither of the sets of parameters differed from one
another significantly (all ts < 1.0). One linear function de-
scribes the total data set quite well; the product-moment
correlation between RT-older and RT-young is r( 10) = +.90,
200 400 600 800 1000 1200
RT-YOUNG
Figure 3. Mean reaction times for young and old subjects on
auditory and visual tasks in Experiment 1. (E = easy version of task;
D = difficult version of task; A = task alone; thus EA = easy auditory
task alone, DE = difficult visual task combined with easy auditory
task, etc.)
and the percentage of variance accounted for by the linear
regression is 81%. These data, therefore, give good support to
Salthouse, Rogan and Prill's (1984) suggestion—division of
attention apparently acts in a way that is very similar to an
increase in single-task complexity.
Discussion
A full discussion of the results and their implications will
be given after Experiment 2 is reported. For the moment it
may be emphasized that in contrast to the claims of Somberg
and Salthouse (1982), Experiment 1 showed strong age effects
in the costs associated with division of attention. Older adults
were affected more by division of attention in the number of
errors made, in absolute DA costs, and in relative DA costs.
In line with the suggestions of Salthouse et al. (1984) and the
results of Craik (1973), this marked difference in conclusions
may be attributable to the different tasks used by Somberg
and Salthouse on the one hand and the present investigators
on the other. The present tasks all clearly involved controlled
processing in the sense of Shiffrin and Schneider (1977),
 274 JOAN M. McDOWD AND FERGUS I. M. CRAIK
whereas the detection and repetition tasks used by Somberg
and Salthouse appear to be more automatic in nature. Also,
the present tasks were arguably more complex and involved
deeper levels of processing, although neither variable was
defined unambiguously. Experiment 2 represents an attempt
to manipulate complexity and degree of choice in a more
objective manner.
One major purpose of Experiment 1 was to examine the
suggestion that age differences in divided attention are ampli-
fied by the use of more complex or more difficult tasks. The
hypothesis received good support from graphic analysis (Fig-
ures 1 and 2) and from an analysis of absolute RT costs but
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was not well supported by the results of relative RT costs.
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Two further points that received confirmation were, first, that
deeper (or more complex) tasks are associated with greater
DA costs than are shallow tasks under dual-task conditions
and, second, that the effects of divided attention are very
similar to those associated with an increase in single-task
complexity. Experiment 2 examined the same issues but
attempted to place task complexity on a more objective
footing by using choice RT tasks involving two, four, or eight
choices. Thus complexity was defined in terms of the amount
of information associated with each decision. Again, the
choice RT tasks were performed by young and older subjects
under conditions of focused and divided attention. Two visual
choice RT tasks were used; the first required only perceptual-
motor analysis, and the second required substantial cognitive
analysis.
Experiment 2
In overview, Experiment 2 explored age differences in
divided attention performance as a function of task complex-
ity—defined quantitatively in terms of number of choices—
and task difficulty—manipulated qualitatively as described
below. In Experiment 2, performance was measured on the
visual tasks only: The visual task in a given condition was
either performed alone or in combination with a standard
auditory task. Thus the function of the auditory task was
simply to provide the second task in dual-task conditions;
performance changes were measured on the visual task. Two
visual tasks were used; the first was the position task from
Experiment 1—subjects pressed keys corresponding to lights
in two, four, or eight positions. As in the previous experiment,
this position task was judged to involve minimal cognitive
processing. The second visual task involved cartoon faces
presented on a computer screen. The faces were either male
or female, were shown with a hat or without a hat, and were
smiling or frowning. In the two-choice condition, subjects
responded on the basis of sex (regardless of other attributes);
in the four-choice condition, both sex and attire (hat/no hat)
were relevant; and in the eight-choice condition, all three
dimensions were relevant. Relative to the positions task, the
relation between stimulus and response in the faces task was
of low compatibility. On the basis of the work of Greenwald
(1972) on ideomotor compatibility, the faces task was consid-
ered to require appreciably more cognitive processing than
did the position task.
On the basis of the results from Experiment 1, we predicted
that there would be an age decrement in divided attention
performance even on the position task and that this decrement
would be amplified by increases in complexity. On the basis
of Experiment 1, it was also expected that the age-related
decrement would be greater in the deeper faces task and that
this decrement would again be exacerbated by complexity.
Finally, the data may be used to explore further the similarity
of division of attention to other forms of task complexity.
Method
Subjects
The young subjects were Erindale College undergraduates who
participated either for course credit or for $5. The older adults were
healthy, community-living volunteers, recruited over the course of
several years to serve as subjects in experiments on aging. They were
not paid for their participation but were reimbursed for travel ex-
penses to and from the laboratory.
In the position task, the mean age of younger subjects was 21.0
years (SD = 2.7), and the mean age of the older group was 71.9 years
(SD = 5.3). Mean Mill Hill vocabulary scores were 14.2 and 16.8 for
the young and older groups, respectively; this difference was signifi-
cant by / test, ((34) = 3.58, p < .01. For the faces task, the mean ages
were 21.0 years (SD = 4.4) and 67.3 years (SD = 5.2) for the young
and old groups, respectively; the corresponding vocabulary scores
were 13.4 and 16.2, respectively. The age-related increment in the
vocabulary test was again significant, £(34) = 3.81,/>< .01.
Tasks
Position task. The general paradigm for both visual tasks was that
of continuous choice reaction time. Three levels of single-task diffi-
culty were included: two-choice, four-choice, and eight-choice reac-
tion time. For the position task, the visual display was generated on
the video display terminal of a PDP-11 computer. It consisted of a
rectangle with its long side on the horizontal axis. The rectangle was
divided into two, four, or eight separate lanes, depending on the task
condition. In front of the subject was a row of eight keys, each of
which was assigned to one of the lanes in the visual display. The
target was a set of two asterisks, which on a given trial would appear
in one of the possible lanes of the rectangle. The subject's task was to
respond as quickly as possible to the appearance of the target by
pressing the appropriate response key. Response times were recorded
by the PDP-11 computer.
The visual task was subject paced; as soon as a response was made,
the next target would appear. The location of the target asterisks on
a given trial was randomly determined by the computer program.
Reaction times associated with incorrect responses were not included
in any data analysis. A block of trials consisted of as many responses
as could be made in 45 s.
Faces task. In this task, the visual stimuli were schematic faces
created by using the Sprite graphic capabilities of the Commodore 64
computer. The faces varied on three dimensions, and each dimension
had two levels, making a total set of eight different faces. The
dimensions were sex, male or female; attire, hat or no hat; and
expression, smile or frown. The basic face was identical for both men
and women, but the hats were different for the two sexes, and the
man wore a bow tie, whereas the lady wore a necklace.
 AGING, TASK DIFFICULTY, AND DIVIDED ATTENTION
In front of the subject was a row of eight response keys that were
assigned to the various faces, depending on the choice condition. The
subject's task was to classify the face presented on a given trial on the
basis of one, two, or three of the varied dimensions. The row of eight
keys was separated by a space into two groups of four keys. One
group was assigned to the female faces, and one group was assigned
to the male faces. The assignment of attribute to response key was
arbitrary but constant, and the assignments within each sex were
mirror images of each other. Both hands were used in each choice
condition: one finger from each hand in the two-choice condition,
two fingers from each hand in the four-choice condition, and four
fingers of each hand in the eight-choice condition. Subjects rested
their fingers on the relevant response keys while waiting to respond;
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responses were registered by depressing any key.
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For each condition, a card was prepared for the subject to use as a
guide indicating the relevant attribute-response key assignments. This
card was placed immediately below the computer screen on which
the faces appeared, and the card was present throughout the relevant
trials. Thus subjects could refer to the card when necessary, and any
load on memory was minimized.
All eight faces appeared in each of the three choice conditions, but
the number of features critical to classification was varied. In the two-
choice condition, responses were made on the basis of sex. Subjects
simply pressed one of two response keys to indicate whether the
character on the screen was male or female. In the four-choice
condition, the relevant attributes were sex and attire; subjects pressed
one of four keys to indicate the presence or absence of a hat within
the particular sex. In the eight-choice condition, all three attributes
were relevant: sex, attire, and expression. In this case, subjects pressed
one of eight response keys to indicate the particular combination of
attributes present in the stimulus face. Response times were recorded
using the millisecond timer in the Commodore 64 computer.
The task was subject paced; a stimulus face stayed on the screen
until a response was made by the subject. As soon as a response was
made, the next stimulus face appeared. The order of appearance of
the stimulus faces was randomly determined. Reaction times associ-
ated with incorrect responses were not included in any data analyses.
A block of trials consisted of as many responses as could be made in
45s.
In all, 72 subjects participated in the experiment; 18 young subjects
and 18 older subjects performed each task. Thus, task was a between-
subjects variable, as, of course, was age; the remaining two variables
(choice and single/dual) were manipulated within subjects.
Auditory task. Subjects monitored a continuous series of spoken
digits for the occurrence of targets, defined as any run of three
consecutive odd digits (e.g., 1, 7, 5, or 3, 9, 1). The digits were
prerecorded and played back on a tape recorder at a rate of 1 digit
every 1.5 s. Response to a target was vocal. When subjects heard the
third digit in a target run, they spoke the third digit out loud, and the
experimenter recorded its accuracy. A trial consisted of 30 digits
filling 45 s. Within each trial, there were four target runs of three
consecutive odd digits.
The purpose of the auditory task was simply to ensure concurrent
processing of two tasks in the divided attention condition; no detailed
measures of performance on this task were taken. Instead, subjects
were required to maintain a constant level of performance on the
auditory task, and the focus of interest was the level of performance
they achieved on the concurrent visual reaction-time task. Detection
accuracy in the auditory task had to equal or exceed 75% (i.e., subjects
were required to detect three of the four targets on a given trial in
order for the trial to count). If detection accuracy fell below 75% on
a dual-task trial, that trial was discounted and more trials were
performed at the end of the experiment to fill in the missing obser-
vations. Thus all the data included for analysis from the choice RT
275
dual-task conditions were collected under conditions in which the
concurrent auditory task was performed with at least 75% accuracy.
Procedure
At the beginning of the experimental session, the subject was seated
in front of a video screen and a row of response keys, and the nature
of the two tasks was explained by the experimenter. Several practice
trials on the auditory task were allowed for the subject to become
familiar with the task. Then a total of 7 single- and 7 dual-task trials
were carried out at each level of choice in the visual reaction time
task. The 14 trials were carried out in the following order: 3 single-
task trials, 4 dual-task trials, 2 single, 3 dual, and 2 single. The first
single-task and the first dual-task trials were considered to be practice
and were not included in any further analyses. The alternating of
single- and dual-task trials was intended to control for practice effects
across trials and to ensure, as far as possible, the validity of the single-
to dual-task trial comparison. The subjects were informed that they
were to try to detect all the targets on the auditory task and that they
would have to repeat trials in which their accuracy fell below 75%.
Other than the initial practice, the auditory task was performed only
under dual-task conditions. The experimenter initiated each trial with
a verbal ready-begin signal and operated the tape recorder and the
computer that controlled the visual display. Each trial was terminated
at the end of 45 s by the experimenter's verbal stop signal.
The order in which the two-, four-, and eight-choice tasks were
performed was counterbalanced across subjects to control for possible
practice or fatigue effects. At the end of the experiment, any dual-
task trials in which a 75% accuracy level had not been reached on
the auditory task were repeated. Thus each subject produced six
single-task and six valid dual-task trials at each of the three levels of
choice in the visual task. Experimental sessions lasted approximately
1 hr.
Results
Errors
Statistical analyses were carried out only on RTs that were
associated with correct responses. However, both older and
younger subjects maintained a high degree of accuracy across
levels of complexity, so that few observations were lost by
discounting error RTs. The high levels of accuracy can be
seen in Table 5, which shows mean proportions of errors on
the visual tasks as a function of age, choice, and single/dual-
task condition.
Separate ANOVAS were carried out on arcsin transformations
of the error proportions in the position and faces tasks. For
the position task, neither age nor single/dual affected the
proportion of errors reliably. There was a significant effect of
choice, however, F(2,68) = 20.9, p <. 001, and the interaction
of choice and single/dual was also reliable, F(2, 68) = 3.19, p
< .05. For the faces task, the error rates were somewhat
higher. In this case, choice was again the only significant main
effect, F(2, 68) = 89.4, p <. 01; the only reliable interaction
was the three-way interaction among age, choice, and single/
dual, F(2, 68) = 6.57, p < .01. This interaction reflects the
fact that older and younger subjects performed comparably
in the two-choice and four-choice tasks but that the older
 276 JOAN M. McDOWD AND FERGUS [. M. CRAIK

Table 5 involving age—that among Age x Choice X Task, F(2, 136)

Mean Error Proportions in Experiment 2 as a Function of = 5.53, p < .01. This effect reflects the fact that age differences
Age, Task, and Experimental Condition in performance were more strongly affected by increasing
Task
complexity in the faces task than in the position task. Cru-
cially, neither the Age x Single/Dual x Choice interaction
Two choice Four choice Eight choice
Task and nor the Age x Single/Dual x Task interaction approached
group Single Dual Single Dual Single Dual significance. Thus, contrary to prediction, the age decrement
Position observed under dual-task (or divided attention) conditions
Young .01 .01 .02 .01 .03 .03 was not amplified reliably by an increase in task complexity
Old .01 .02 .02 .02 .03 .04 (degree of choice) nor by an increase in task difficulty (from
Faces position to faces tasks).
Young .02 .03 .02 .02 .06 .07
Old .02 .02 .03 .02 .08 .13
In line with the results of Experiment 1, the present data
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did show that the difference between single- and dual-task

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performance was amplified reliably both by task complexity

subjects made relatively more errors in the eight-choice con- and task type. That is, for Single/Dual x Choice, F(2, 136) =
dition, especially under dual-task conditions. 27.0, p< .01, and for Single/Dual x Task, F( 1, 68) = 49.4, p
The main point to emerge from the error analysis is that, < .01. These effects are qualified by a highly reliable three-
with the exception of the eight-choice faces task, errors were way interaction, however: For Single/Dual x Choice x Task,
quite rare. Such errors as there were increased somewhat with F(2, 136) = 35.8, p < .02. This three-way interaction reflects
task difficulty; therefore, as in Experiment 1, reaction times the fact (see Table 7, absolute DA costs) that divided attention
for the more difficult conditions are likely to be somewhat costs drop with increasing complexity in the position task,
low. There are no indications of trade-offs between time and but rise substantially in the faces task.
errors across the conditions of the experiment. Divided attention costs. The absolute DA costs were calcu-
lated by subtracting single-task RTs from dual-task RTs in all
Reaction Times conditions. These values are shown in the top half of Table
7. Further analyses were not performed on these derived data
Table 6 shows the mean RTs for both age groups in all because the effects were already shown as interactions with
conditions.1 There are clear effects of age, task, choice, and single/dual in the ANOVA just reported. However, the absolute
single/dual conditions. These effects were confirmed by a DA costs shown in Table 7 make it clearer that DA costs
four-factor ANOVA on the data in Table 6; the main effects of decline with increasing complexity in the position task but
age, F(\, 68) = 27.8; task, F(l, 68) = 214.9; choice, F(2, 136) rise with complexity in the faces task. Also the age difference
= 260.1; and single/dual, F(l, 68) = 142.1, were all reliable in DA costs tends to decline with complexity in the position
a t p < . 0 1 or better. task but increases quite substantially in the faces task; this
Of the interactions involving age, the Age x Task interac- latter trend in the data is reflected by a tendency for the four-
tion was marginally significant, F(l, 68) = 3.69, p < .06, way interaction among Age X Single/Dual X Complexity x
showing that the difference in RTs between the position and Task to approach significance, F(2, 136) = 2.56, .05 < p <
faces task was somewhat greater for the older group. Both the .10.
Age x Choice interaction, F(2, 136) = 10.66, and the Age x Tables 6 and 7 thus show that whereas absolute RTs
Single/Dual interaction, f(1,68) = 18.12, were highly reliable, increased with the degree of choice in the position task, the
showing that older subjects' performance was more detrimen- cost of performing the task under divided attention conditions
tally affected than that of their young counterparts, both by actually decreased with degree of choice for both age groups.
the increase in complexity associated with a greater degree of Speculative explanations for this unpredicted effect are sug-
choice and by division of attention. These two-way interac- gested in the Discussion section.
tions were qualified by one reliable three-way interaction The bottom half of Table 7 shows relative DA costs for
both tasks—that is, the absolute DA costs divided by the time
to perform the task under single-task conditions. For these
Table 6
tasks, relative DA costs declined with an increase in task
Mean Reaction Times (in Milliseconds) as a Function of
Age, Task, and Experimental Condition in Experiment 2
Experimental condition 1
Note that these response times appear unusually short relative to
values typically reported in the literature for similar tasks. It is possible
Two choice Four choice Eight choice
Task and that these short response times are an artifact of the nature of the
group Single Dual Single Dual Single Dual visual display. That is, the stimuli were displayed in a double-height
Position mode: The first line was built on the screen, followed by the second
Old 182 383 394 541 533 680 line, after which the response timer was started. Although the building
Young 143 190 279 318 393 413 of the display is rapid, it is not instantaneous. Thus it is possible that
Faces subjects could initiate their responses on the basis of the visual
Old 600 964 765 1177 1665 2520 information in the first line, before the response time clock was
Young 472 684 649 840 1194 1634 started. This, in turn, would produce artificially short response times.
 AGING, TASK DIFFICULTY, AND DIVIDED ATTENTION 277

Table 7
Mean Divided Attention Costs as a Function of Age, Task, D POSITION TASK
and Choice Condition in Experiment 2 A FACES TASK
Experimental condition

Task and group Two choice Four choice Eight choice

Absolute DA costs
Position
Old 201 147 147
Young 47 39 20
Faces
Old 364 412 855
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Young 212 191 440

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Relative DA costs
Position
Old 1.14 0.37 0.27
Young 0.35 0.15 0.08
Faces
Old 0.60 0.52 0.43
Young 0.44 0.29 0.36
Note. DA = divided attention. 200 «30 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800

complexity, partly reflecting the higher baselines in the four-
and eight-choice conditions and also (in the position task)
reflecting the fact that absolute DA costs decline with increas-
ing choice. Separate ANOVAS conducted on the data from each
task revealed significant effects of age in each case, F(l, 34)
= 34.1, p < .01, for the positions task, and F(l, 34) = 4.46, p
<. 05, for the faces task. Degree of choice was associated with
reliable decreases in relative DA costs for both tasks, and
finally, the Age x Choice interaction was reliable in the case
of the position but not for the faces task.
Divided Attention and Complexity
As in Experiment 1, the mean RTs for the young and older
groups on each task condition were plotted together (Figure
4). Again, separate regression equations were calculated for
single- and dual-task data. For single tasks, the slope and
intercept were 1.38 and negative 31.9, respectively; for dual
tasks, slope and intercept were 1.48 and 41.7, respectively.
Again, within each parameter across task type, these values
did not differ from one another significantly (again, all ts, <
1.0). Figure 4 shows that the points are well fitted by one
linear function. The product-moment correlation between
young and older group means across the 12 conditions was r
= +.94, and the percentage of variance accounted for by the
linear regression was 88. It may therefore be concluded (in
line with the conclusion from Experiment 1) that the effects
of division of attention are equivalent to those caused by
increases in task complexity associated with degree of choice
and with qualitative variations in processing requirements.
Discussion
Before discussing the results relating to the effects of aging,
it is of some interest to note that divided attention costs were
strongly affected by the task performed. As in Experiment 1,
RT-YOUNG ( m s e c )
Figure 4. Mean reaction times for young and old subjects on the
visual tasks in Experiment 2. (Numbers 2, 4, 8 refer to choice
condition; S = single task condition; D = dual task condition.)
DA costs were greater on the deeper faces task than on the
position task (the F value for the Single/Dual x Task inter-
action was F[ 1, 68] = 49.4, p< .001). It should be noted that
whereas we have referred to the difference between the two
tasks as one of different depths of processing or amounts of
cognitive involvement, there is also a clear difference in S-R
compatibility between the tasks. The position task involves
very compatible S-R mapping, whereas the faces task is much
less compatible. It is known that highly S-R compatible tasks
are performed faster and are less vulnerable to interference
from other tasks (Fitts, 1964).
Divided attention costs were also amplified by task com-
plexity, but the picture is clouded by the fact that whereas the
degree of choice is associated with increases in absolute DA
costs on the faces task, there is a slight trend in the opposite
direction on the position task. Two speculative reasons for
the unexpected pattern of results on the position task are,
first, that the overall decision time is taken up by mental
operations that vary considerably in the resources they re-
quire. If the proportion of relatively undemanding operations
increases with degree of choice, then the effects of divided
attention would be absorbed more easily in the four- and
eight-choice conditions. For example, the times taken to
identify the location of the stimulus and to select and execute
the correct response may increase (as well as central decision
times) with greater degrees of choice, and these relatively
undemanding operations may occupy time that can also be
used to perform the secondary task. A second possibility
follows from Kahneman's (1973) suggestion that subjects
simply cannot harness as much effort in easy tasks as they
can in difficult tasks. It may be that in the simple two-choice
condition of the position task, no more effort could be directed
 278 JOAN M. McDOWD AND FERGUS I. M. CRAIK
to the task to prevent it from suffering some decrement under
dual-task conditions. In the case of the more difficult eight-
choice task, however, increased effort is garnered and per-
formance benefits, thus preventing any substantial decrement
due to divided attention. Clearly, both suggestions are specu-
lative and post hoc; it may be sufficient to note that increases
in complexity associated with increasing degrees of choice do
not necessarily lead to concomitant increases in DA costs.
With respect to aging, the major predictions were that an
age decrement in divided attention performance would again
be found and that this age-related effect would be amplified
by differences in task type and by increases in task complexity.
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Some of the predictions were borne out by the data, but some
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received no support. First, the overall age decrement in per-
formance was exacerbated by complexity in both tasks, and
this two-way interaction was qualified by a significant three-
way interaction among age, complexity, and task; that is, the
Age x Complexity interaction was larger in the faces task,
which presumably involved greater amounts of central proc-
essing. This finding echoes similar patterns of results involving
age differences, degree of choice, and decreasing stimulus-
response compatibility (Welford, 1958).
Strong age differences in divided attention performance
were found in both tasks, and this was true both for absolute
and for relative DA costs. However, contrary to prediction,
the Age x Single/Dual interaction was not affected by either
degree of choice or by the qualitative nature of the task. That
is, neither the Age x Single/Dual X Complexity interaction,
nor the Age x Single/Dual x Task interaction approached
significance (F< 1.5, in both cases). Table 7 shows that age
differences in absolute DA costs actually decline somewhat
with increasing complexity on the position task, and this may
reflect features of this particular task, as speculated above.
For the faces task, the pattern of RT differences is in accord-
ance with prediction, but the Age x Single/Dual x Complex-
ity interaction does not reach significance. The failure to find
effects of either task complexity or task type on age-related
DA costs thus fail to support the suggested reason for the
difference in results reported by Somberg and Salthouse
(1982) and Salthouse et al. (1984). We return to this problem
in the General Discussion section.
Finally, Figure 4 lent strong support to the notion that
division of attention acts to increase task complexity in a
fashion very similar to the increases associated with increasing
choice and with increased task difficulty. There is apparently
no reason to believe that the difficulty associated with division
of attention presents a special problem to older people that is
different from that faced on any complex task.
General Discussion
The two experiments reported in this article were carried
out with three main issues in mind. The first was to examine
the effects of different tasks on performance under divided
attention conditions; the second was to gain further insight
into the circumstances in which age differences in divided
attention performance do and do not occur; and the third was
to examine the specific hypothesis that age differences in
divided attention costs would be amplified by increases in
task difficulty.
With respect to the first issue, Experiment 1 showed that
absolute DA costs rose significantly with task difficulty—both
the difficulty of the task being measured and the difficulty of
the task with which it was combined. When absolute costs
were pooled for particular task combinations, it was again
found that DA costs rose as the component task increased in
difficulty; moreover, this result held both for absolute and
relative DA costs. In the first experiment, difficulty was ma-
nipulated by varying the depth of processing required for the
tasks. In Experiment 2, both depth (or S-R compatibility)
and degree of choice were manipulated. The overall ANOVA
showed a strong interaction between task and divided atten-
tion costs, F(l, 68) = 49.4, p < .001, reflecting the fact that
DA costs were substantially higher in the faces task. The
effects of choice were less clear-cut, however, inasmuch as the
position task yielded anomalous results; DA costs fell, if
anything, with increasing complexity—possibly because the
costs were absorbed in longer peripheral processing times
associated with the more complex conditions or possibly
because the more complex conditions allowed for more effort
to be mobilized and deployed. However, the faces task did
show a substantial interaction between single/dual and com-
plexity. On balance, therefore, the experiments provided rea-
sonably strong evidence that at least absolute DA costs in-
crease with the difficulty of the component tasks, in which
difficulty is manipulated by increasing the degree of cognitive
involvement necessitated by the task and (in certain cases, at
least) by increasing the degree of choice involved.
The second issue concerned the reality of age-related dec-
rements in performance under dual-task conditions. Here,
the results of the present studies were quite unambiguous;
highly reliable age decrements in divided attention perform-
ance were found in all conditions of both experiments, and
this result held for both absolute and relative DA costs. Taking
the present results along with the similar findings from many
previous studies (see Craik, 1977, and Salthouse, 1982, for
reviews), it can be reasonably claimed that the results of
Somberg and Salthouse (1982) are the anomalous ones. These
investigators found no age differences in divided attention
costs, conceivably because the tasks used were simple, repet-
itive, and involved relatively automatic processing.
The third, and major, point addressed by the present ex-
periments was therefore to examine the possibility that age
differences in DA costs are negligible when the component
tasks are simple and relatively automatic but that an age
decrement appears with complex tasks and is amplified by
further increases in complexity. The present experiments
provide at least some support for this hypothesis. The only
contrary evidence comes from the results of the position task
in Experiment 2.
In any event, the crucial Age x Single/Dual x Task Diffi-
culty interaction was found in Experiment 1, although it was
statistically reliable for absolute but not for relative DA costs.
In the faces task of Experiment 2, the RT data show the
hypothesized pattern of results but did not reach statistical
significance; the interaction was reliable for the error data,
however. There is, therefore, some limited support for the
 AGING, TASK DIFFICULTY, AND DIVIDED ATTENTION
notion that the age decrement in DA costs is amplified by
increases in task complexity. A further possibility is that the
presence or absence of an age difference in DA costs depends
on other task parameters such as whether the tasks require
automatic or controlled processing (Hasher & Zacks, 1979;
Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977).
What are the implications of the present results for theories
of aging? One finding that seems reasonably clear is that tasks
performed under divided attention conditions lie on the same
regression function as tasks performed under conditions of
focused attention (Figures 3 and 4). The slopes of the regres-
sion lines relating young to older RTs were 1.56 and 1.47 for
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Experiment 1 and 2, respectively—values in good agreement
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
with the mean slope of 1.62 reported by Cerella et al. (1980)
for subjects over 60 years of age compared with subjects in
their 20s. The implication of the present findings is therefore
that the dual-task situation represents one of several possible,
and apparently equivalent, ways of increasing overall task
complexity (Salthouse, 1982) that differentially penalizes
older adults.
Why are older people penalized more by increasing com-
plexity? One line of explanation is that suggested by Birren
(1965) and developed by Salthouse (1982, 1985) to the effect
that mental operations take longer to perform with increasing
age and that this behavioral slowing is amplified as the task
involves a greater number of operations. It has also been
suggested (Cerella, 1985; Cerella et al., 1980) that central or
higher order processes show greater effects of slowing than do
peripheral, sensory-motor processes, and this suggestion fits
well with the observation from the present experiments that
the effects of aging on decision times were greater in tasks
ostensibly requiring deeper processing.
A related factor that may be relevant here is the subject's
ability to deal with the overall task in a coordinated, holistic
fashion. One effect of aging may be a progressive inability to
deal with a complex task in a holistic way and instead having
to deal with the task as a collection of components. The
resources required to coordinate the component operations
(the concurrence costs, in Navon & Gopher's, 1979, phrase)
are likely to be greater in the second case. As a final specula-
tion, dissimilar tasks are easier to perform concurrently, pos-
sibly because they draw on different resource pools (Allport,
1980; Navon & Gopher, 1979), and it is possible that two
concurrent tasks may be more easily kept functionally distinct
by the younger information-processing system. Cerebral atro-
phy in the aging brain may make it more difficult to maintain
distinct and insulated resource pools (Kinsbourne, 1980), and
such decreased functional distance would act to make each
task interfere with the smooth execution of the others to a
greater extent.
Sensible choices among these and other forms of explana-
tion can be made only on the basis of experimental observa-
tions. The present experiments represent a contribution to
that data base.
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APA Buys Clinician's Research Digest

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the digest as of July 1, 1988. Presently published by the California-based Relational Dy-
namics Institute, CRD offers practitioners brief summaries of clinically relevant research
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