Younger and older adults performed lexical decisions on ambiguous words, un
ambiguous words, and pseudowords, and simultaneously responded to an audito
ry probe presented at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 90, 180, or 270
ms. For both age groups, lexical decisions and probe responses were faster
for ambiguous words than for unambiguous words, and slowest for pseudoword
s. For the older adults, but not the younger adults, lexical decisions were
slower when the probe was presented (the dual-task condition), compared wi
th a control condition in which the lexical decision was performed alone. T
he older participants also showed slower tone-detection responses in the du
al-task condition than when the tone was presented alone. For all participa
nts, proportional tone-detection times (compared with tones in isolation) d
ecreased with increasing SOA, but this decrease was less pronounced in the
older group. Finally, the time between responses in the dual-task condition
was longer for older than for younger adults. The results indicate that wo
rd meaning influences the allocation of attention similarly for younger and
older adults, but that older adults suffer a cost and become disproportion
ately slower in processes related to response coordination and output.