VISUAL-SEARCH TASKS - SLOWING OF STRATEGIC AND NONSTRATEGIC PROCESSESIN THE NONLEXICAL DOMAIN

Some investigators have argued that aging affects the slowing of proce sses in nonlexical tasks more than it does the slowing of processes in lexical tasks, but that within task domains, the slowing is identical . Other investigators have argued that even within nonlexical tasks th ere is differential slowing such that aging affects processing speed m ore in (nonlexical) coordinative tasks than it does in (nonlexical) se quential tasks. Perhaps, more finely still, there is a differential sl owing in coordinative nonlexical tasks. Toward this end, latent models of general and process-specific slowing in coordinative nonlexical ta sks were formulated for older adults. A visual search task was then us ed to test the two types of models. It was found that a latent model o f process-specific slowing explained significantly more of the variabi lity than a latent model of general slowing, indicating that there is a differential slowing of processes among coordinative tasks within th e nonlexical domain. It was also discovered that the coordinative proc ess most greatly affected was that of deciding to terminate the search when Mo target was present in the display, indicating together with o ther studies a possible difference in the slowing of strategic process es among both coordinative and sequential tasks within the nonlexical domain, but no difference in the slowing of nonstrategic processes.