The role of verbal ability in the processing of complex verbal information.

This study investigated the relation between psychometric mental-ability test scores and several reaction-time measures; a simple-reaction task, a choice-reaction task, the Posner and Mitchell (1967) letter-identification task, and a variation of the sentence-verification task. Scores on the Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices and the Verbal Subtest of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SATV) were obtained. The less complex information-processing tasks replicate earlier studies in which general intelligence was only marginally related to reaction-time measures. The sentence-verification task systematically varied task complexity. Several direct and derived measures from the task were significantly correlated with psychometric mentalability measures. However, even though a number of precautions were taken to ensure that the sentence-verification task assessed purely verbal-processing efficiency, there was little evidence for an important task-specific relation between verification measures and verbal ability. Moreover, despite its relative verbal complexity, sentence verification did not reflect a greater relationship to verbal ability than other tasks did. Overall, the information-processing efficiency measures used in this study suggested a fairly general, rather than a task-specific, relationship to intellectual ability.

[Retention of relevant and irrelevant information in advanced age]. / Das Behalten von relevanter und irrelevanter Information im höheren Lebensalter.

In the literature on cognitive aging, differences between the cognitive abilities of young and older-adults have long been seen as supporting the view of an age-dependent cognitive deficit. However, findings are equivocal. In the context of more recent findings implying an age-dependent change in the efficiency of attentional and inhibition processes, the present study compares two groups of young and older adults concerning their ability to solve an everyday-like task. In order to effectively solve the task, subjects had to focus on goal-relevant information and, at the same time, inhibit irrelevant information. Subjects selected the relevant items from a shopping list and subsequently participated in a word detection experiment. The results demonstrate older adults taking more time overall to solve the task. However, they were differentiating and maintaining both relevant and irrelevant information in a way comparable to the younger adults. This finding indicates a deficit in older adults concerning the speed component of information processing. However, older adults do not seem to be impaired in their ability to focus on relevant information.