Variability in Proactive and Reactive Cognitive Control Processes Across the Adult Lifespan
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Summary
This study investigates the adult lifespan trajectory of cognitive control processes underlying task-switching performance, specifically addressing why aging consistently increases mixing costs but yields inconsistent effects on switch costs. The authors hypothesize that these behavioral patterns stem from a common cause: age-related difficulties in processing mixed-repeat trials. To test this, they analyzed data from 95 participants (ages 18–80) using a cued-trials task-switching paradigm with long preparation intervals. The study employed two complementary analytical approaches: the EZ2 evidence accumulation model to decompose response times into latent cognitive variables, and event-related potentials (ERPs) to temporally distinguish proactive (cue-driven) and reactive (target-driven) control processes. Behavioral results indicated that under highly practiced conditions, aging was associated with increasing response time (RT) mixing costs but reducing RT switch costs. Both effects were primarily driven by an age-related impairment in mixed-repeat trials. Analysis of latent variables revealed that increasing age was associated with slower non-decision processes, a slower rate of evidence accumulation, and a higher response criterion. Crucially, age effects on mixing costs were evident only in the response criterion, whereas age effects on switch costs appeared across all three latent variables. This suggests that older adults maintain a high, cautious response criterion for all trials in mixed-task blocks, whereas younger adults flexibly adjust their criterion on a trial-by-trial basis. ERP data provided temporal insights into these mechanisms. Age-related increases were observed in preparation for mixed-repeat trials, anticipatory attention, and post-target interference. Cue-locked ERPs linked to proactive control showed an early emergence of age differences in response criterion. These findings indicate that older adults exhibit reduced cognitive flexibility, failing to lower their decision threshold for repeat trials in mixed contexts despite adequate preparation time. Consequently, older adults treat mixed-repeat trials similarly to switch trials, resulting in sustained mixing costs and an apparent reduction in switch costs. The significance of these findings lies in clarifying the mechanisms of age-related decline in cognitive control. The study demonstrates that the inconsistent age effects on switch cost are not due to distinct processes but are artifacts of a generalized difficulty with mixed-repeat trials. The results support the view that aging involves a strategic shift toward caution and a decline in the flexible adjustment of decision thresholds, rather than a uniform slowing of all cognitive processes. This provides a unified explanation for previously conflicting literature on task-switching and aging, highlighting the role of response criterion flexibility in maintaining efficient cognitive control across the lifespan.
Key finding
Aging is associated with increased mixing costs and reduced switch costs in task-switching, primarily due to older adults maintaining a high, inflexible response criterion and exhibiting slower evidence accumulation and non-decision processes compared to younger adults.
Methodology
lab_experiment
Sample size: 95
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via author_sweep_intake on 2026-05-28.
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | author_sweep | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-28 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| enrich | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-28 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 15 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
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