{Reference Type}: Journal Article
{Title}: Aging and Executive Control: Reports of a Demise Greatly Exaggerated.
{Author}: Verhaeghen P;
{Journal}: Curr Dir Psychol Sci
{Volume}: 20
{Issue}: 3
{Year}: Jun 2011
{Factor}: 7.867
{DOI}: 10.1177/0963721411408772
{Abstract}: I report a series of meta-analyses on aging and executive control. A first set of analyses failed to find evidence for specific age-related deficits in tasks of selective attention (inhibition of return, negative priming, flanker, and Stroop) or tasks tapping local task-shifting costs (reading with distractors is an exception) but found evidence for specific age-related deficits in tasks of divided attention (dual tasking and global task-shifting costs). The second set examined whether executive control explained any age-related variance in complex cognition (episodic memory, reasoning, spatial abilities) over and beyond the effects of speed and working memory; it did not. Thus, the purported decline in executive control with advancing age is clearly not general, and it may ultimately play only a small role in explaining age-related deficits in complex cognition.