Midlife aging, open-ended planning, and laboratory measures of executive function

The frontal lobes show early signs of structural and functional change in t he course of adult aging. The Ist study of the current article examined whe ther midlife aging influences open-ended planning, a skill that is particul arly sensitive to frontal lobe damage. There were no midlife declines in th e ability to carry out variants of the T. Shallice and P. Burgess (1991) Si x Elements and Multiple Errands Tests. Younger adults were more likely to b reak individual task rules. In a 2nd experiment, middle-aged adults perform ed worse than young adults did on laboratory executive tests sensitive to f rontal lobe damage-Self-Ordered Pointing and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Tes t (N. M. Fristoe, T. A. Salthouse, & J. L. Woodard, 1997). In spite of chan ges in novel executive test performance, real-world executive skills appear to be spared in midlife aging.