Cognitive aging
Does multitasking get harder with age, and is it one skill?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Doing two things at once cost older adults more on some tasks but not others, and the size of the cost on one task barely predicted the cost on another, suggesting multitasking is not a single general ability.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Web-based, self-administered testing across six age bands; within-subject single- versus dual-task load manipulated in three tasks (Trail Making Test A/B, TAP divided attention, MEMO visual memory with auditory secondary task), analysed with mixed models and regressions.
- N
- N=419 · 419 participants retained after outlier, technical and incomplete-data exclusions from 780 who started.
- Population
- Italian-speaking healthy adults aged 18-76 tested online
- Outcome
- Accuracy/efficiency and dual-task costs (percentage change from single to dual task) in each task; relations with age, global cognitive efficiency (Auto-GEMS) and cognitive reserve
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Key findings
Performance fell with age and with added load on all tasks. Dual-task costs grew with age for the Trail Making and memory tasks, but not in a straight line: Trail Making costs were stable until about the 40s and then worsened, while memory costs rose up to around the 50s and then levelled off. Divided-attention costs showed no age effect. Higher global cognition and cognitive reserve were weakly linked to smaller costs, and costs on different tasks were almost uncorrelated, with the largest correlation only about 0.045.
Methodology
The researchers tested 419 healthy Italian-speaking adults aged 18 to 76 entirely online. Each person did three tasks in easier single-task and harder dual-task versions: a digital Trail Making Test (connecting numbers, then alternating numbers and letters), a divided-attention task monitoring visual and auditory signals, and a picture-memory task done alone or while listening for target letters. They calculated the percentage drop in performance from single to dual task (the dual-task cost) and related it to age band, a short web-based test of global cognition, and a cognitive reserve score based on education, work and leisure.
Limitations
The design is cross-sectional, so age differences could reflect generational differences rather than change within individuals. Testing was unsupervised online, so digital skill, home distractions and compliance were uncontrolled, and people who volunteer for online studies may be more tech-savvy than average. The oldest group was small, and the divided-attention task always ran its conditions in the same order, so practice effects may have hidden load or age effects there. The extracted text lacks the full methods for the Trail Making and divided-attention tasks and the participant section, so some procedural details cannot be checked here.
How this study connects
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