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2016, Number 4

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Revista Cubana de Salud y Trabajo 2016; 17 (4)

Dynamic patterns of cognitive slowing in elder individuals: behavior splitting of the reaction time

Amador RFJ, Mayor RJH

Language: Spanish
References: 32
Page: 12-23
PDF size: 511.71 Kb.


ABSTRACT

Introduction: The cognitive slowing is considered the cardinal and earliest sign of the natural aging process. However, the reported results show certain ambiguity in the functional interpretation of its dynamic pattern. Objectives: To design an automated procedure for cognitive evaluation to allow the behavior splitting of the reaction time in its central and peripheral components (Split Reaction Time Test) and describe the patterns of temporal change of cognitive slowing in elder individuals during the execution of controlled and automated processing tasks. Method: 35 healthy elders were compared with 80 young controls using several discriminative reaction time tasks of increasing demands of decision difficulty and exactly the same demands of motor response. The groups were paired by similar academic levels, intellectual performance and anxiety and depression levels. The central and peripheral components of the reaction time were recorded separately as well as the errors. Results: Elders showed a slowing pattern characterized by the interventions of at least two factors, one of additive general slowing consisting of an exclusive reduction of speed and the other one, multiplicative, related to complexity processing. Conclusions: The observed dissociation suggests that the cognitive slowing in elders is modulated by the so-called general slowing factor that produces a general reduction of the processing speed and also, most likely by a second factor related to certain limitations in attention control mechanisms.


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