Age Differences in Efficiency and Effectiveness of Encoding for Visual Search and Memory Search: A Time-Accuracy Study

Abstract

In a time-accuracy study, encoding for visual search and memory search was compared in a sample of 23 younger and 26 older adults. Older adults were found to be slower than younger adults in two respects (viz., processing was delayed, and speed-of-processing was lower). There was no reliable age difference in asymptotic performance when analyzed at the level of proportion correct. Age differences in speed-of-processing were larger in visual search than in memory search. The results run counter capacity- or resource accounts of cognitive aging, but they are in line with the framework that predicts larger age differences in visuo-spatial than lexical tasks (Myerson & Hale, 1993).