Cognitive control challenge task across the lifespan

Politakis, Vida Ana (author), Slana Ozimič, Anka (author), Repovš, Grega (author)

Meeting everyday challenges and responding in a goal-directed manner requires both the ability to maintain the current task set in face of distractors—stable cognitive control, and the ability to flexibly generate or switch to a new task set when environmental requirements change—flexible cognitive control. While studies show that the development varies across individual component processes supporting cognitive control, little is known about changes in complex stable and flexible cognitive control across the lifespan. In the present study, we used the newly developed Cognitive Control Challenge Task (C3T) to examine the development of complex stable and flexible cognitive control across the lifespan and to gain insight into their interdependence. A total of 340 participants (229 women, age range 8–84 years) from two samples participated in the study, in which they were asked to complete the C3T along with a series of standard tests of individual components of cognitive control. The results showed that the development of both stable and flexible complex cognitive control follows the expected inverted U-curve. In contrast, the indeces of task set formation and task set switching cost increase linearly across the lifespan, suggesting that stable and flexible complex cognitive control are subserved by separable cognitive systems with different developmental trajectories. Correlations with standard cognitive tests indicate that complex cognitive control captured by the C3T engages a broad range of cognitive abilities, such as working memory and planning, and reflects global processing speed, jointly suggesting that the C3T is an effective test of complex cognitive control that has both research and diagnostic potential.

• Language: English
• Keywords: cognitive control, cognitive processes, task switching, aging, Cognitive control challenge task C3T, stable cognitive control, flexible cognitive control, cognitive control challenge task, development, task set switching, lifespan
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: MF - Faculty of Medicine; FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2022
• Number of pages: 23 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 12, art. 789816
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-134963
• UDC: 159.95:616.8
• ISSN on article: 1664-1078
• DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.789816
• COBISS.SI-ID: 97026563
• Publication date in RUL: 14.02.2022

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Frontiers in psychology
• Shortened title: Front. psychol.
• Publisher: Frontiers Media
• ISSN: 1664-1078
• COBISS.SI-ID: 519967513

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: kognitivni nadzor, kognitivni procesi, preklapljanje med nalogami, staranje