Time-Accuracy Relationships in Young and Old Adults

Abstract

The relationships between reaction time and classification accuracy were compared in young (18 to 21 years) and old (60 to 84 years) adults in a choice reaction time task. Both young and older adults showed equivalent rates of increasing accuracy with greater time, but the temporal duration at which the accuracy first exceeded the chance level was shorter for young than for older adults. It was suggested that aging is associated with a slowing of the information integration and/or response preparation processes but not with a slowing of the actual rate of information extraction.