Older adults showed general slowing on an arrow task
Two experiments with over 200 older and younger adults found no specific deficit in older adults’ ability to ignore distracting information.
Over 200 older and younger adults took part in two experiments examining processing speed and inhibitory control, the ability to suppress irrelevant information or responses. The experiments used an arrow-flanker task, which involves responding to a target arrow while ignoring surrounding arrows. The researchers constrained when participants could respond and used a computational model to distinguish general slowing from a specific inhibitory-control deficit.
Older adults showed general slowing, without a selective deficit in inhibitory control on this task. The researchers also found that general slowing was sufficient to explain mixed findings from earlier studies in which participants could respond in their own time.
Why it matters
The study addressed a central question in cognitive aging: whether difficulties suppressing irrelevant information reflect a specific weakness in that ability or broader slowing of mental processing.
Caveats
Comparing age groups does not by itself establish how an individual’s abilities change with age. The findings concerned a specific laboratory task, not inhibitory control in every setting.
The paper
Does Global Slowing Explain Age Effects in Inhibitory Control?
University of Michigan
Psychological Science, 14 Oct 2026
