Journal article
Naturalistic assessment of executive function and everyday multitasking in healthy older adults
Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, Vol.20(6), pp.735-756
11/01/2013
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/106526
PMCID: PMC3708986
PMID: 23557096
Abstract
Everyday multitasking and its cognitive correlates were investigated in an older adult population using a naturalistic task, the Day Out Task. Fifty older adults and 50 younger adults prioritized, organized, initiated, and completed a number of subtasks in a campus apartment to prepare for a day out (e.g., gather ingredients for a recipe, collect change for a bus ride). Participants also completed tests assessing cognitive constructs important in multitasking. Compared to younger adults, the older adults took longer to complete the everyday tasks and more poorly sequenced the subtasks. Although they initiated, completed, and interweaved a similar number of subtasks, the older adults demonstrated poorer task quality and accuracy, completing more subtasks inefficiently. For the older adults, reduced prospective memory abilities were predictive of poorer task sequencing, while executive processes and prospective memory were predictive of inefficiently completed subtasks. The findings suggest that executive dysfunction and prospective memory difficulties may contribute to the age-related decline of everyday multitasking abilities in healthy older adults.
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Details
- Title
- Naturalistic assessment of executive function and everyday multitasking in healthy older adults
- Creators
- Courtney McAlister - Department of Psychology, Washington State UniversityMaureen Schmitter-Edgecombe - Department of Psychology, Washington State University
- Publication Details
- Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, Vol.20(6), pp.735-756
- Academic Unit
- Psychology, Department of
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Identifiers
- 99900546716901842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article