Age differences in central (semantic) and peripheral processing: the importance of considering both response times and errors.

In this project we examined the effect of adult age on visual word recognition by using combined reaction time (RT) and accuracy methods based on the Hick-Hyman law. This was necessary because separate Brinley analyses of RT and errors resulted in contradicting results. We report the results of a lexical decision task experiment (with 96 younger adults and 97 older adults). We transformed the error data into entropy and then predicted RT by using entropy values separately for exposure duration (thought to influence peripheral processes) and word frequency (thought to influence central processes). For exposure duration, the entropy-RT functions indicate that older adults show higher intercepts and slopes than do younger adults, suggesting an encoding decrement for older adults. However, for word frequency, older adults show higher intercepts but not steeper slopes than younger adults. Older adults thus show a peripheral processing decrement but not a central processing decrement for lexical decision.

Binge drinking in later life: comparing young-old and old-old social drinkers.

Although widespread binge drinking has been documented in younger groups, few studies have examined this behavior among older individuals. We assessed differences in bingeing between young-old (n = 189) and old-old (n = 137) social drinkers. Of those who reported drinking, no significant age o rgender differences were uncovered in alcohol consumption (M = 6.6, SD = 9.4) or degree of alcohol-related problems (M = 12.2, SD = 3.1). Logistic regression analysis showed that old-old adults were 15.7 times less likely to binge drink than the young-old; older women overall were 19.7 times less likely to binge relative to older men. Also, correlations were more diverse among old-old adults. The need for better understanding of bingeing among elders is discussed.