Cognitive aging: is there a dark side to environmental support?

Lindenberger, Ulman; Mayr, Ulrich · 2013 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2013.10.006

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Summary

This opinion paper by Lindenberger and Mayr addresses the developmental shift in cognitive control during aging, specifically questioning whether the increased reliance on environmental support by older adults carries significant costs. Building on Craik’s (1983) framework, which posits that memory deficits are exacerbated by self-initiated processing and mitigated by external cues, the authors argue that this dynamic extends beyond memory to perception, learning, and action management. The central thesis is that older adults increasingly "outsource" cognitive control to the environment due to declines in internally triggered and maintained task representations, a shift that compromises performance by allowing environmental affordances to dominate thought and behavior. The authors synthesize evidence from various experimental paradigms to illustrate this phenomenon. In perceptual processing, EEG studies (Müller et al.) reveal that older adults exhibit mandatory, stimulus-driven entrainment to auditory stimuli, with synchronization negatively correlated with perceptual speed, unlike younger adults who show top-down modulation. Similarly, dichotic listening tasks (Passow et al.) demonstrate that older adults’ attention is driven almost exclusively by perceptual saliency, lacking the flexible top-down control seen in younger adults. In working memory, ERP data indicate weaker inhibitory control (alpha oscillations) in older adults, leading to indiscriminate processing of distractors. Regarding action, task-switching paradigms show that older adults form strong stimulus-to-task-set bindings, relying on external cues to trigger task sets. This reliance becomes costly in "fade-out" procedures, where older adults struggle to disengage from cue-dependent switching even when only one task remains, continuing to fixate on irrelevant cues. Additionally, older adults prefer time-consuming visual scanning of look-up tables over faster memory retrieval, further highlighting their dependence on external information. The findings indicate that while environmental support facilitates performance in cue-rich contexts, it imposes a "dark side" by reducing cognitive flexibility. Older adults are less able to resist stimulus-driven entrainment, disengage from distractors, or transition away from cue-dependent strategies when they are no longer necessary. This results in compromised goal-directed activity, as environmental affordances constrain high-level task representations. The authors conclude that cognitive aging theories must account for this general developmental trend from internal to environmental control. Understanding these mechanisms is crucial for designing aging-friendly environments that mitigate the costs of this shift, ensuring that external support aids rather than hijacks cognitive processes.

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• cognitive aging