IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v75y2020i9p1819-1830..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Associations Between Control Beliefs and Response Time Inconsistency in Older Adults Vary as a Function of Attentional Task Demands

Author

Listed:
  • Eric S Cerino
  • Robert S Stawski
  • G John Geldhof
  • Stuart W S MacDonald
  • Angela Gutchess

Abstract

ObjectiveControl beliefs are established correlates of cognitive aging. Despite recent demonstrations that response time inconsistency (RTI) represents a proxy for cognitive processing efficiency, few investigations have explored links between RTI and psychosocial correlates. We examined associations among RTI and control beliefs (perceived competence and locus of control) for two choice-response time (RT) tasks varying in their attentional demands.MethodControl beliefs and RTI were measured weekly for 5 weeks in a sample of 304 community-dwelling older adults (Mage = 74.11 years, SD = 6.05, range = 64–92, 68.58% female).ResultsMultilevel models revealed that for the attentionally demanding task, reporting higher perceived competence than usual was associated with lower RTI for relatively younger participants and greater RTI for relatively older participants. For the less attentionally demanding task, reporting higher perceived competence than usual was associated with lower RTI for relatively older participants. Links between locus of control and RTI were comparatively scant.DiscussionOur findings suggest that control beliefs may have adaptive and maladaptive influences on RTI, depending on dimension of control beliefs, individual differences in level of control beliefs and age, as well as attentional task demands. Both for whom and when control beliefs can be leveraged to optimize cognitive aging are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Eric S Cerino & Robert S Stawski & G John Geldhof & Stuart W S MacDonald & Angela Gutchess, 2020. "Associations Between Control Beliefs and Response Time Inconsistency in Older Adults Vary as a Function of Attentional Task Demands," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 75(9), pages 1819-1830.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:75:y:2020:i:9:p:1819-1830.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gby124
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:75:y:2020:i:9:p:1819-1830.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.