Is there more room to improve? The lifespan trajectory of procedural learning and its relationship to the between- and within-group differences in average response times.

ABSTRACT: Characterizing the developmental trajectories of cognitive functions such as learning, memory and decision making across the lifespan faces fundamental challenges. Cognitive functions typically encompass several processes that can be differentially affected by age. Methodological issues also arise when comparisons are made across age groups that differ in basic performance measures, such as in average response times (RTs). Here we focus on procedural learning-a fundamental cognitive function that underlies the acquisition of cognitive, social, and motor skills-and demonstrate how disentangling subprocesses of learning and controlling for differences in average RTs can reveal different developmental trajectories across the human lifespan. Two hundred-seventy participants aged between 7 and

SUBMITTER: Juhasz D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6636713 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature