Aging and task design shape the relationship between response time variability and emotional response inhibition

ABSTRACT

Intra-individual variability (IIV) refers to within-person variability in behavioural task responses. Several factors can influence IIV, including aging and cognitive demands. The present study investigated effects of aging on IIV of response times during executive functioning tasks. Known age-related differences in cognitive control and emotion processing motivated evaluating how varying the design of emotional response inhibition tasks would influence IIV in older and younger adults. We also tested whether IIV predicted inhibitory control across task designs and age groups. Older and younger adults (N = 237) completed one of three versions of a stop-signal task, which all displayed happy, fearful, or neutral faces in Stop trials. An independent group of older and younger adults (N = 80) completed a go/no-go task also employing happy, fearful and neutral faces. Results showed older adults had more consistent responses (lower IIV) than younger adults in the stop-signal task, but not the go/no-go task. Lower IIV predicted more efficient emotional response inhibition for fear faces in the stop-signal task, but only when attention to emotion was task-relevant. Collectively, this study clarifies effects of aging and task design on IIV and illustrates how task design impacts the relationship between IIV and emotional response inhibition in younger and older adults.

KEYWORDS:

• Intra-individual variability
• response inhibition
• emotion
• aging
• executive function

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Samantha Williams, PhD and members of the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience of Aging lab for their assistance with project development and data collection, and also David Balota, PhD for his consultation on this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, JDW, upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported primarily by the National Institutes of Health under Grant K01AG049075 (JW). Additional funding, facilities and resources were provided by Saint Louis University.