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Autor*innen: Schmiedek, Florian; Lövdén, Martin; Lindenberger, Ulman
Titel: Keeping it steady. Older adults perform more consistently on cognitive tasks than younger adults
In: Psychological Science, 24 (2013) 9, S. 1747-1754
DOI: 10.1177/0956797613479611
Dokumenttyp: 3a. Beiträge in begutachteten Zeitschriften; Aufsatz (keine besondere Kategorie)
Sprache: Englisch
Schlagwörter: Altern; Altersgruppe; Arbeitsgedächtnis; Empirische Untersuchung; Erwachsener; Gedächtnis; Kognitive Kompetenz; Kognitive Prozesse; Leistung; Test; Unterschied; Wahrnehmung
Abstract: People often attribute poor performance to having bad days. Given that cognitive aging leads to lower average levels
of performance and more moment-to-moment variability, one might expect that older adults should show greater
day-to-day variability and be more likely to experience bad days than younger adults. However, both researchers
and ordinary people typically sample only one performance per day for a given activity. Hence, the empirical basis
for concluding that cognitive performance does substantially vary from day to day is inadequate. On the basis of
data from 101 younger and 103 older adults who completed nine cognitive tasks in 100 daily sessions, we show that
the contributions of systematic day-to-day variability to overall observed variability are reliable but small. Thus, the
impression of good versus bad days is largely due to performance fluctuations at faster timescales. Despite having
lower average levels of performance, older adults showed more consistent levels of performance across days.
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