When and how did you go wrong? Characterizing mild functional difficulties in older adults during an everyday task.

ABSTRACT: Mild functional difficulties associated with cognitive aging may be reliably measured by coding "micro-errors" during everyday tasks, like meal preparation. Micro-errors made by 25 older adult and 48 younger adults were coded on four dimensions to evaluate the influence of: 1) poor error monitoring; 2) goal decay; 3) competition for response selection when switching to a new subtask; and 4) interference from distractor objects. Micro-errors made by young adults under a dual task load also were analyzed to determine the influence of overall performance level. Older adults' micro-errors were observed when switching to a new subtask and to unrelated distractors. Slowed error monitoring and goal decay also influenced micro-errors in older adults, but not significantly more so than younger adul

SUBMITTER: Divers R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7606330 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature