AGING OF ATTENTION - DOES THE ABILITY TO DIVIDE DECLINE

Previous research has yielded conflicting results regarding the relati onship between adult age and the ability to divide attention between t wo concurrent tasks. At least some of the inconsistency is probably at tributable to methodological variations, such as the manner in which d ivided-attention ability has been assessed, how single-task performanc e has been considered, and the degree of control over relative emphasi s placed on each task. Two experiments employing procedures sensitive to these concerns were conducted in which a speeded decision task was performed during the retention interval of a letter-memory task. The r esults of both experiments indicated that there were relatively few ag e-related influences on dual-task performance vis-a-vis those on singl e-task performance.