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Executive function across the life span

Article  in  Acta Psychologica · February 2004

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 Acta Psychologica 115 (2004) 167–183
www.elsevier.com/locate/actpsy

Executive function across the life span

Philip David Zelazo *, Fergus I.M. Craik 1, Laura Booth 2

Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ont., Canada M5S 3G3

Abstract

The development and determinants of executive function (EF) were studied in children
(mean age ¼ 8.8 years), young adults (M ¼ 22:3 years), and elderly adults (M ¼ 71:1 years).
EF was indexed by perseverative responding on two bidimensional sorting tasks (Visually
Cued Color-Shape task and Auditorily Cued Number-Numeral task), and age-related changes
in EF were considered in relation to estimates of conscious vs. unconscious memory that were
obtained using the process dissociation procedure (PDP). Results revealed the rise and fall of
EF across the life span, with significant quadratic trends found for performance on both sort-
ing tasks and for the conscious recollection component (C) of the PDP task. Regression anal-
yses indicated that PDP estimates of conscious memory accounted for variation in
performance on the visual sorting task, but not on the auditory sorting task. The findings
are discussed in terms of their implications for hierarchical models of EF and its develop-
ment.

2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

PsycINFO classification: 2340; 2346; 2720; 2820

Keywords: Executive functions; Ageing; Lifespan; Task-switching

1. Introduction

Young children are often aptly characterized as stimulus bound, concrete, pres-
ent-oriented, and impulsive (e.g., Inhelder & Piaget, 1964). As they develop, how-
ever, they are able increasingly to represent multiple aspects of a problem, plan a
future course of action, keep that plan in mind and act on it, and detect and use
information about errors. This growing ability to engage in deliberate, goal-directed

*
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: zelazo@psych.utoronto.ca (P.D. Zelazo), craik@psych.utoronto.ca (F.I.M. Craik).
1
Present address: Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre.
2
Present address: Department of Psychology, York University.

0001-6918/$ - see front matter
2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2003.12.005
168 P.D. Zelazo et al. / Acta Psychologica 115 (2004) 167–183

thought and action, which depends on the increasing effectiveness of such processes
as selective attention, working memory, and inhibitory control, is often studied un-
der the rubric of executive function (EF). By now, a considerable body of research
shows convincingly that there are systematic, age-related improvements in EF during
childhood and into adolescence (for review, see Zelazo & M€ uller, 2002). It is also
clear that EF declines during aging (see Mayr, Spieler, & Kliegl, 2001; McDowd
& Shaw, 2000), suggesting that the development of EF follows an inverted U-shaped
curve when considered across the life span (Dempster, 1992).
Inverted U-shaped developmental curves (or U-shaped curves, depending on
whether the dependent variable is positively or negatively valued) have been docu-
mented for a variety of basic cognitive processes, such as processing speed and
short-term memory (e.g., see Kail & Salthouse, 1994). However, relatively few stud-
ies have measured EF across a wide range of ages. An early study by Comalli, Wap-
ner, and Werner (1962) used the Stroop Color-Word Task––a classic measure of
EF––with participants ranging in age from 7 to 80 years. These authors found the
largest Stroop interference effect among 7-year-olds, with the magnitude of the effect
declining until late adolescence, remaining constant through young adulthood, and
then increasing again for the oldest group of adults (65–80 years). More recently, Ce-
peda, Kramer, and Gonzalez de Sather (2001) examined task switching in individuals
from 7 to 82 years. Task switching arguably provides a measure of participants’ abil-
ity to adopt and change a problem-solving set––a key aspect of EF. In a series of
trials, participants were shown either one or three numerical ones or threes (i.e., 1,
111, 3, or 333) and required to classify these stimuli differently depending on a cue
(i.e., they were required either to indicate which numeral was displayed or to indicate
how many numerals were displayed). A U-shaped function was obtained for switch
costs––the increase in reaction time (RT) on switch trials compared to non-switch
trials. Cepeda et al. (2001) also found evidence that life span changes in switch costs
could be attributed primarily to changes in the time needed to prepare for a new
task, as opposed to changes in the decay rate of a previous task (i.e., task set inertia;
Allport, Styles, & Hsieh, 1994).
In contrast to these studies, Williams, Ponesse, Schachar, Logan, and Tannock
(1999) failed to find evidence of U-shaped age-related changes on another well-estab-
lished measure of EF: stop-signal reaction time. In the stop-signal procedure, partic-
ipants are presented with a series of stimuli and told to press one of two keys
depending on whether an X or an O appears, unless they hear a tone (the stop sig-
nal), in which case they are to refrain from responding. These authors tested individ-
uals ranging from 6 to 81 years of age, and while they found improvement between
the youngest group (6–8 years) and the middle childhood group (9–12 years), there
was no evidence of an age-related increase in stop-signal RT during adulthood
(although there was evidence of age-related slowing on go-signal RT). Subsequent
work, however, did reveal U-shaped changes in stop-signal RT on a modified
stop-signal task in which participants were required to stop when they heard one
tone but not when they heard another (Bedard et al., 2002).
The differential sensitivity of different measures of EF to developmental changes
may provide useful information about which aspects of EF change across the life
 P.D. Zelazo et al. / Acta Psychologica 115 (2004) 167–183 169

span, and about the nature of EF itself. EF is a functional construct, and as such, it
is defined solely in terms of its behavioral outcome: deliberate, goal-directed thought
and action. The actual mechanisms that make EF possible are likely varied, and they
remain a matter of considerable debate.
One approach to understanding EF and its development during childhood is the
Cognitive Complexity and Control (CCC) theory (Zelazo & Frye, 1998), according
to which age-related changes in EF can be attributed to changes in the maximum
hierarchical complexity of the rules that children can formulate and use when solving
problems. Age-related changes in maximum rule complexity are, in turn, made pos-
sible by biologically determined developmental increases in the degree to which chil-
dren can consciously reflect on the rules they represent (i.e., age-related increases in
highest level of consciousness that children can muster in response to situational de-
mands; Zelazo, 2004). According to this approach, 3-year-olds can easily integrate
two rules (e.g., ‘‘If red then here; if blue then there’’) into a single rule system (Zelazo
& Reznick, 1991). However, 3-year-olds have difficulty reflecting on these rules and
consequently cannot switch flexibly between incompatible pairs of rules (e.g., ‘‘If
sorting by color, then red goes here and blue there. If sorting by shape, then car goes
here and flower goes there’’; Frye, Zelazo, & Palfai, 1995). Reflection on lower-order
rules is required in order to consider them in contradistinction to other, incompatible
rules and embed them under higher-order rules. Higher-order rules are needed in or-
der to select the appropriate lower-order rules. Characteristic failures of EF, such as
perseveration and knowledge-action dissociations, are likely to occur until incompat-
ible rule systems are integrated into a single, more complex rule system via a higher
level of reflection or re-entrant processing.
This approach to EF can be extended to account for the impairments in EF asso-
ciated with aging. Although elderly adults are capable of high levels of conscious
reflection and capable of formulating and using high-order rules, doing so is likely
to be resource-demanding and effortful, as is maintaining rules in working memory
so that they can be used to constrain inferences and guide behavior (Braver, Barch,
Keys, et al., 2001). Extending CCC theory in this way is compatible with recent pro-
posals by Craik (2002a, 2002b). According to Craik, knowledge may be represented
as a hierarchy of levels of representation, with higher levels corresponding to more
abstract representations and lower levels corresponding to more specific representa-
tions (e.g., specific details of an event). Consideration of the overlap between this ap-
proach, formulated to understand the effects of aging, and CCC theory, formulated
to understand child development, prompts the following set of suggestions.
Children and older adults both show poorer performance relative to young adults
on ‘‘working memory’’ and ‘‘executive function’’ tasks. Very young children simply
cannot reflect on lower-order rules and cannot construct superordinate rules that
govern the appropriate selection of a lower-order rule when different lower-order
rules result in different responses (Zelazo & Frye, 1998). In contrast, older children
and young adults can construct increasingly higher-order rules, but they may have
difficulty doing so on the fly, and even when successful, they may have difficulty
holding the higher-order rule in working memory, resulting in perseveration on a
prepotent lower-order rule. We assume that such complex cognitive processing
170 P.D. Zelazo et al. / Acta Psychologica 115 (2004) 167–183

requires considerable expenditure of attentional resources, whose availability de-

pends on the integrity of the frontal lobes (Craik & Grady, 2002) and the dopamine
system (Braver et al., 2001). These biological systems decline in efficiency in the
course of normal aging, with the result that older adults may need extra time to ac-
cess and reflect on higher-order representations in the Ôlevels of consciousness’ hier-
archy (Zelazo, 2004). Moreover, because many situations will be familiar to older
adults (in contrast to young children), older adults may be more likely to access high-
er-order representations that are pre-formed, context-bound, and hence, relatively
inflexible. For all these reasons, the necessity to switch rapidly between sets of rules
will be difficult for older adults, resulting again in perseverative errors. In fact, age-
related decrements in some but not all aspects of task-switching have been reported
(Meiran, Gotler, & Perlman, 2001), and older adults do make more perseverative er-
rors on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST; Craik, Morris, Morris, & Loewen,
1990; Grant & Berg, 1948; Heaton, 1981). More generally, older adults will exhibit
difficulty in the intentional modulation of levels of consciousness and in the ability to
navigate knowledge hierarchies flexibly and effectively. Some levels of representation
may be difficult to access at all; for example Craik (2002a, 2002b) has suggested that
in memory tasks older adults often fail to retrieve information from lower levels
associated with specific knowledge (e.g., names) and with specific contextual details.
The present suggestion implies that they may also fail to intentionally access and uti-
lize higher-level representations––needed, for example, to understand analogies, gen-
eralize old knowledge to new situations, and switch flexibly between sets.
From this perspective, age-related changes in EF across the life span can be
understood in terms of corresponding changes in the ability to formulate higher-level
hierarchical representations in childhood and to consciously select and maintain
them in aging. One purpose of the present study was to document age-related
changes in EF using the same measures of EF in participants ranging from children
to elderly adults. A second purpose was to examine whether age-related changes can
be accounted for by changes in conscious control.
To assess EF, we relied on two sorting tasks, based on existing measures of EF
such as the WCST, the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS; Frye et al., 1995),
and various measures of task switching (e.g., Goschke, 2000; Rogers & Monsell,
1995). Performance on the WCST shows considerable improvements in performance
over the school age years (e.g., Chelune & Baer, 1986) but older adults perform less
well than young adults (Craik et al., 1990; Raz, 2000). However, the WCST is an
inductive, hypothesis-testing task that taps numerous aspects of EF simultaneously,
and, as a result, the origin of errors on this task is difficult to determine (e.g., see De-
lis, Squire, Bihrle, & Massman, 1992). For example, perseveration could occur after
a rule change in the WCST either because a new rule was not hypothesized, was
hypothesized but not selected, or was selected but not acted upon. In contrast, the
DCCS, which has been used with preschool age children, is relatively simple, and er-
rors are consequently relatively easy to interpret. In this deductive rule-use task, chil-
dren are shown two bivalent, bidimensional target cards (e.g., depicting a blue rabbit
and a red boat), and they are told to match a series of test cards (e.g., red rabbits and
blue boats) to these target cards first according to one dimension (e.g., color) and
 P.D. Zelazo et al. / Acta Psychologica 115 (2004) 167–183 171

then according to the other (e.g., shape). Regardless of which dimension is presented
first, 3-year-olds typically perseverate by continuing to sort cards by the first dimen-
sion after the rule is changed.
The new sorting tasks were deductive rule-use tasks, like the DCCS, and they were
designed to be suitable across a wide range of ages. One of the new sorting tasks was
the Visually Cued Color-Shape task, in which participants were shown four target
cards and asked to sort test cards either by color or shape, depending on a visually
presented cue (an X or a Y ). Forty out of 50 trials were cued as color trials; the
remaining 10 trials were shape trials, and they occurred as single trials unpredictably
throughout the sequence. The preponderance of color trials was intended to induce a
strong set to sort by one dimension. The second new sorting task was the Auditorily
Cued Number-Numeral task, in which participants viewed a 2 · 2 grid where each
quadrant contained either one, two, three, or four small squares and also a numeral
1, 2, 3, or 4; the number of squares in a quadrant did not correspond to the numeral.
Four keys in the same configuration as the grid were used for responding. The stim-
uli and cues for responding were presented as numbers by a male or female voice; if
the number was spoken by one voice, the rule was ‘‘respond by pressing the key cor-
responding to the quadrant containing that numeral,’’ if the number was spoken by
the other voice, the rule was ‘‘respond by pressing the key corresponding to the
quadrant containing that number of small squares.’’ Again, 40 trials were cued to
one dimension and the remaining 10 trials were cued to the other dimension. Fig.
1 depicts the displays for both sorting tasks.
To assess conscious control––particularly as it contributes to memory––indepen-
dently of EF, we relied on the process dissociation procedure (PDP) suggested and
elaborated by Jacoby and his colleagues (Jacoby, 1991; Jacoby, Toth, & Yonelinas,
1993). The basic idea is that the relative contributions of consciously controlled
and automatic influences on behavior may be estimated by comparing performance
when the two processes work together, to performance when the processes are set in
opposition to each other. For example, in one paradigm used by Jacoby and col-
leagues, participants first studied two lists of words, one presented visually (seen)
and another presented auditorily (heard). Participants were then given a series of
word stems to complete. Under one set of instructions (inclusion instructions), par-
ticipants were told to try to complete the stems with any word, seen or heard, that
they had encountered in the presentation phase. Under another set of instructions
(exclusion instructions) they were told to complete only those word stems that could
be completed to make a word they had heard; stems of previously seen words or com-
pletely new words were to be left uncompleted. When seen word stems are consid-
ered, they could be completed under inclusion instructions either because the
participant consciously recollected that it had been presented visually, because it
was on the original list (without recollecting its presentation modality), or simply be-
cause it felt familiar. In this case automatic and controlled processes work in concert.
On the other hand, if a seen stem is completed under exclusion conditions, it must
mean that the participant does not recollect that it was presented visually; that is,
the automatic influence to complete it is unopposed by any consciously controlled
influence.
172 P.D. Zelazo et al. / Acta Psychologica 115 (2004) 167–183

(a) START

1 2

4 3

(b) START

Fig. 1. (a) Sample target cards (top row) and test card in the Visually Cued Color-Shape task. Participants
are told, ‘‘If there is an X underneath the test item I want you to press the button corresponding to its
color. If there is a Y underneath the item, I want you to press the button corresponding to its shape.’’
(b) Visual display for the Auditorily Cued Number-Numeral task. Participants are told, ‘‘You will hear
a male and a female voice saying numbers between one and four. If you hear the male voice, I want
you to press the button corresponding to the number of squares in the section. If you hear the female
voice, I want you to sort by the number in the corner of the section.’’

By comparing the probability of completing seen stems when instructed to do so

(inclusion) versus when instructed not to do so (exclusion), it is possible to derive
estimates of the extent to which performance on the task is determined by controlled
(C) versus automatic (A) processes. On the assumption that C and A are independent
processes, the probability of using a previously seen word in the inclusion condition
is taken to reflect the additive influences of C and A, minus the overlap, that is:
pðInclusionÞ ¼ C þ A
CA or C þ Að1
CÞ ð1Þ
If a previously seen word is used (in error) in the exclusion condition, the assumption
is that controlled processes are not operating in that portion of the trials (thus
represented by 1
C) and that behavior is controlled by automatic influences only.
That is:
 P.D. Zelazo et al. / Acta Psychologica 115 (2004) 167–183 173

pðExclusionÞ ¼ Að1
CÞ: ð2Þ

From these two equations, estimates of C and A can easily be derived (see Jacoby,
1991).

C ¼ Inclusion
Exclusion ð3Þ

A ¼ Exclusion=ð1
CÞ ð4Þ

Errors produced in the exclusion condition, referred to as action slips, indicate

that automatic processes exert more influence on behavior than controlled processes.
Moreover, as noted, it is assumed that action slips occur only given a failure of con-
trolled processes. As Jacoby and Kelley (1992) state, ‘‘In the exclusion condition, a
studied word will be produced only when there is a failure to consciously remember
that it was on the list’’ (p. 176). While this assumption may be reasonable for healthy
young adults (although even this is debatable), it seems unlikely to hold in children
and in the elderly. Children and the elderly may have more difficulty than young
adults in bringing consciously accessed information to bear on a situation when this
information conflicts with response tendencies. For example, 3-year-olds can repeat
both the pre- and the post-switch pairs of rules in the DCCS (and hence, represent
them at one level of consciousness), but they nonetheless fail to use them (Zelazo,
Frye, & Rapus, 1996). When given exclusion instructions, children may sometimes
fail to exclude words that they could nonetheless correctly categorize as seen. By this
analysis there is therefore an interesting category of genuine or dissociated action
slips, which occur when a participant makes an action slip in the exclusion condition
despite conscious recollection. Indeed, in contrast to the process-dissociation
approach, which treats controlled processes as an all-or-none phenomenon, develop-
mental data argue for a more nuanced notion of age-related levels of consciousness
(Zelazo, 2004), and a distinction between levels may be revealed by the occurrence of
genuine action slips.
In the current study, participants were required to study lists of words presented
auditorily or visually, and then complete a list of word stems under both inclusion
and exclusion conditions. Following each condition, participants were shown the
study lists and asked to identify the modality in which words were originally pre-
sented. This measure was designed to provide a preliminary assessment of the fre-
quency of genuine action slips.
In summary, the purpose of the present study was to examine age-related changes
in EF across the life span using a common set of measures, and explore the extent to
which these changes could be understood in terms of corresponding changes in con-
scious control. School-age children (between 8 and 9 years), young adults, and el-
derly adults were tested on two sorting tasks based on the DCCS, and estimates
of conscious and automatic influences on memory were obtained using the PDP,
which involved a word stem completion task administered under both inclusion
and exclusion conditions. Eight- to nine-year-old children were selected because pilot
testing raised questions about whether all of the tasks were suitable for younger chil-
dren.
174 P.D. Zelazo et al. / Acta Psychologica 115 (2004) 167–183

Relative to young adults, both children and elderly adults were expected to make
more perseverative errors on the sorting tasks. Children and elderly adults were also
expected to exhibit lower estimates of conscious control on the word stem comple-
tion task, and to produce more genuine action slips in the exclusion condition of this
task. We also expected that variations in EF as measured by sorting could be ac-
counted for by variations in conscious contributions to memory. Together these re-
sults would support the suggestion that the development of EF across the life span
follows an inverted U-shaped function, and encourage efforts to understand EF in
terms of underlying changes in the ability to consciously set up, maintain, and access
representations at the appropriate level of complexity.

2. Method

2.1. Participants

There were 20 participants in each of three groups: 8- to 9-year-old children (mean

age ¼ 8.8 years, range: 8.2–9.5 years), young adults (mean age ¼ 22.3 years, range:
19.5–26.6), and elderly adults (mean age ¼ 71.1 years, range: 65.8–74.2). Ten of
the children were male, as were eight of the participants in each of the other groups.
Children and elderly adults were recruited from databases containing names of indi-
viduals who had expressed an interest in participating in research. All young adults
were undergraduate students at the University of Toronto, and some were enrolled
in a 2nd-year course in cognitive psychology. Students received course credit for par-
ticipation where applicable. The older adults had received 16.5 years of formal edu-
cation on average and were healthy, community-living seniors who belonged to a
pool of volunteers who come to the lab regularly to participate in cognitive experi-
ments. Their average proportion correct in the Mill Hill Vocabulary (MHV) test
(Raven, Court, & Raven, 1988) was 0.82, which is comparable to the levels found
in similar studies of cognitive aging (e.g. Hay & Jacoby, 1999, MHV ¼ 0.82; Rendell
& Craik, 2000, MHV ¼ 0.87). All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal
vision and hearing.

2.2. Design

Age-related changes in performance were assessed using a cross-sectional design

with three age groups: children, young adults, and elderly adults. Three tasks (a
word stem completion task, a Visually Cued Color-Shape task, and an Auditorily
Cued Number-Numeral task) were administered consecutively to all participants
in a single session lasting 45 min to 1 h. Word stem completion consisted of two con-
ditions (inclusion and exclusion), which were separated by the two sorting tasks and
presented in a counterbalanced order. Within each order, half of the participants re-
ceived the auditory lists first (for both inclusion and exclusion) and half received the
visual lists first. In addition, half of the participants performed the visual sorting task
 P.D. Zelazo et al. / Acta Psychologica 115 (2004) 167–183 175

first and half performed the auditory sorting task first. This design resulted in eight
possible task orders.

2.3. Procedure

2.3.1. Visually cued color-shape task

Participants were seated in front of a desktop computer that displayed a row of
four target items (red triangle, green circle, blue square, yellow diamond) and told
to sort a series of 50 test items either by shape or color (see Fig. 1a for an example
of the display). Four adjacent keys on the keyboard corresponded to the items in this
row. On each trial, a test item was presented at a central location beneath the row.
The color and shape of this test item were randomly chosen on each trial from a pool
of items that consisted of all possible combinations of the four colors and four
shapes. Below each test item was either an X or a Y , which indicated whether the
participant was supposed to sort the item by color (X ) or shape (Y ). Forty test items
were accompanied by an X and 10 by a Y . The Y items were distributed randomly
throughout the 50 trials. For the first 29 participants (9 children and 10 adults at
each age), test items were displayed for a maximum of 6 s; this proved to be too short
for some children and elderly adults, however, so there was no maximum for the
remaining participants. (Analyses confirmed that this modification to the procedure
had no effect on performance, and that identical results were obtained whether or not
this variable was controlled statistically). If a participant made an error in sorting the
test item, the item remained on the screen until the correct key was pressed. The pri-
mary dependent measures were the number of perseverative and non-perseverative
errors. An error was considered perseverative if it would have been the correct re-
sponse according to the other rule; otherwise it was considered non-perseverative.

2.3.2. Auditorily cued number-numeral task

Participants were seated at a computer which displayed a 2 · 2 grid. Within each
quadrant were from one to four small squares. In the inner corner of each quadrant
was a numeral indicating the quadrant number. The number of squares in the quad-
rant did not correspond to the numeral in the quadrant (see Fig. 1b for the display).
Four keys in the same configuration as the grid were used for responding. On each
trial, participants heard a randomly selected number word (between 1 and 4) spoken
in a male or a female voice and played by the computer. Forty numbers were pre-
sented in the male voice, and 10 in the female voice, with an intertrial interval of
7.5 s. Participants were told that if the number word was spoken in the majority
(male) voice, then they were supposed to press the key corresponding to the quad-
rant with the appropriate number of squares in it. If the number word was spoken
in the minority (female) voice, then they should press the key corresponding to
the quadrant with the appropriate numeral. Again, the female voice trials were dis-
tributed randomly throughout the total set. In the event of an incorrect key press, the
stimulus was repeated until the correct key was pressed. As in the visual sorting task,
the primary dependent measures were the number of perseverative and non-persev-
erative errors. An error was considered perseverative if it would have been the
176 P.D. Zelazo et al. / Acta Psychologica 115 (2004) 167–183

correct response according to the other rule; otherwise it was considered non-persev-
erative.

2.3.3. Word stem completion task

This task involved two conditions, an inclusion condition and an exclusion con-
dition. In the inclusion condition, participants were first presented with two lists
of 15 common nouns (e.g., grass, chair), one at a time, one list visually and the other
auditorily. When presented visually, words were displayed in large type on a com-
puter monitor at a rate of 1 per 3 s. When presented auditorily, words were read
aloud by a female experimenter at the same rate. Different lists were used for visual
and auditory presentations. Each list was presented twice, in a different random or-
der. Participants were instructed to remember the words and to remember whether
they had been presented visually or auditorily. Subsequently, participants were
shown 45 three-letter word stems (e.g., GRA-, CHA-) on the computer screen, at
a rate of one per 7 s, and were told to complete the stem with any word they had
previously heard or seen, or failing that, with the first appropriate word that came
to mind. Fifteen of the 45 stems could be completed by previously seen words and
15 by previously heard words. The remaining 15 were baseline stems that could
not be completed by words previously seen or heard. All stems had several possible
completions. The list of baseline stems was the same for all participants, and one
possible completion of each stem was arbitrarily determined to be the ‘‘target base-
line word.’’ Participants were instructed to complete the stem by stating the word
aloud to the experimenter, who then recorded it. Any stem that could not be com-
pleted within the 7-second time frame was left blank.
In the exclusion condition, participants were presented with a different pair of 15-
word lists. Lists were presented exactly as in the inclusion condition. At test, partic-
ipants were required to complete a different set of 45 stems using only those words
presented auditorily, excluding those presented visually. In particular, they were told
to complete the stem with a studied word if it corresponded to a word previously
heard but to complete any stem corresponding to a word previously seen with a dif-
ferent word. They were told to complete words neither seen nor heard with the first
appropriate word that came to mind. As in the inclusion condition, 15 stems could
be completed by previously seen words, 15 could be completed by previously heard
words, and 15 were baseline stems that could not be completed by words previously
seen or heard.
In both conditions, once all the stems had been presented, the participant was
shown the visual and auditory words from the study phase, plus the 15 target baseline
words, in a fixed order at a rate of 1 per 5 s, and instructed to tell the experimenter
whether the word had originally been presented auditorily, visually, or not at all.

3. Results

Analyses were conducted to address four questions: (1) Is EF, as measured by the
two sorting tasks, an inverted U-shaped function of age across the lifespan? (2) Do
 P.D. Zelazo et al. / Acta Psychologica 115 (2004) 167–183 177

conscious contributions to memory, estimated via the PDP, also show an inverted U-
shaped pattern? (3) Can estimates of conscious memory help explain age-related
changes in EF? And finally, (4) are children more likely than adults to commit gen-
uine action slips in the exclusion condition of the PDP?

3.1. Is EF an inverted U-shaped function of age?

Significant effects of age were found for many measures of performance on the vi-
sual and auditory sorting tasks (e.g., total number of errors, mean reaction time).
However, the primary purpose of these tasks was to yield a more specific measure
of EF. Both the visual and auditory sorting tasks required the flexible use of two
incompatible rules. Although the use of one of the two rules was required on a
majority (80%) of trials, difficulty on the task was not restricted to minority trials,
nor even to ‘‘switch trials’’ where the correct rule differed from the rule that was cor-
rect on the previous trial. Therefore, as our primary index of EF, we measured
perseverative errors––responses that would have been the correct response according
to the other rule. On any given trial, one possible error was perseverative, and two
were non-perseverative. To account for group differences in aspects of performance
not specific to EF, a baseline-adjusted measure of perseveration was calculated as the
proportion of trials on which participants made a perseverative error minus half the
proportion of trials on which they made non-perseverative errors. (Note: Analyses
based on proportional data were rerun using arcsin transformed data, and the same
pattern of results was obtained).
U-shaped functions were found for perseverative errors on both sorting tasks (see
Fig. 2). A two-way (age group · task) ANOVA comparing perseveration for the
three groups on each sorting task revealed a significant effect of age group,
F ð2; 57Þ ¼ 8:26, p < 0:001, and a significant effect of task, F ð1; 57Þ ¼ 4:03,
p < 0:05, indicating more perseveration on the visual task. The age group · task
interaction failed to reach statistical significance, F ð2; 57Þ ¼ 2:70, p < 0:08, although
the effect of task was most pronounced for the elderly adults, as can be seen in Fig. 2.
For the Visually Cued Color-Shape task, curve fitting indicated a significant qua-
dratic trend, F ð1; 57Þ ¼ 3:38, p < 0:05, and Tukey’s HSD tests (p < 0:05) confirmed
that the young adults made fewer perseverative errors than the other two groups,
which did not differ. Considered in terms of the standard deviation (SD) of the
young adult group, mean scores for both children and elderly adults were about 2
SDs higher than that of the young adults.
A significant quadratic trend was also found for the Auditorily Cued Number-
Numeral task, F ð1; 57Þ ¼ 6:51, p < 0:005. However, for this task, Tukey’s HSD tests
showed that children made more perseverative errors than the other two groups,
which did not differ. Children’s mean score was again about 2 SDs higher than that
of the young adults; the mean for elderly adults was 0.69 SD higher.
Performance on the two sorting tasks was positively correlated for the young
adults (r ¼ 0:56, p < 0:01) and for the elderly adults (r ¼ 0:62, p < 0:005), but not
significantly so for the children (r ¼ 0:20, p ¼ 0:39).
178 P.D. Zelazo et al. / Acta Psychologica 115 (2004) 167–183

0.12
Visually Cued
Auditorily Cued

Proportion Perseveration (adjusted) 0.1

0.08

0.06

0.04

0.02

0
Children Young Adults Elderly Adults
Group

Fig. 2. Mean baseline-adjusted proportions of perseverative errors (and standard errors) on the Visually
Cued Color-Shape task and the Auditorily Cued Number-Numeral task, as a function of age group.

3.2. Is conscious memory an inverted U-shaped function of age?

The primary purpose of the word stem completion task was to yield estimates of
conscious (C) and automatic (A) contributions to memory so that these estimates
could be considered in relation to our measures of EF. Estimates of C and A were
obtained following the PDP as described by Jacoby et al. (1993) and as outlined
in Section 1. The probability of (correctly) using a previously seen word in the inclu-
sion condition corresponds to: C þ Að1
CÞ. The probability of (incorrectly) using a
previously seen word in the exclusion condition corresponds to: Að1
CÞ. The esti-
mate of A was corrected for group differences in baseline completions using the mean
probability of correctly completing baseline stems in the inclusion and exclusion con-
ditions. (A group · condition ANOVA on baseline performance confirmed that there
was no effect of condition, and that condition did not interact with group.)
As can be seen in Fig. 3, C varied markedly as function of age group,
F ð2; 57Þ ¼ 13:55, p < 0:0001, and exhibited a strong quadratic trend, F ð1; 57Þ ¼
12:26, p < 0:0001. Tukey’s HSD tests indicated that young adults had higher values
of C than children and elderly adults, who did not differ. In terms of the SD for the
young adult group, the mean for children was 3.2 SDs higher than the young adult
group, whereas the mean for elderly adults was 2.6 SDs higher. In contrast to C,
there were no age group differences for A, F ð2; 57Þ ¼ 0:47, p > 0:05.

3.3. Can estimates of conscious memory help explain age-related changes in EF?

The relation between PDP estimates of conscious versus automatic influences on

memory and perseveration on the sorting tasks was assessed by separate regression
 P.D. Zelazo et al. / Acta Psychologica 115 (2004) 167–183 179

0.8
Automatic

0.7 Conscious

0.6

0.5
Estimate

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
Children Young Adults Elderly Adults
Group

Fig. 3. Mean estimates (and SEs) of automatic and consciously controlled influences in the word-stem
completion task, as a function of age group.

analyses for each sorting task. It was expected that C but not A would predict per-
severation. When entered first, C accounted for a significant amount of variation on
the visual sorting task, R2 ¼ 0:12, p < 0:01, but not the auditory sorting task,
R2 ¼ 0:01. Adding estimates of A failed to produce a significant increase in explained
variance in either the visual task (R2 Change ¼ 0.03, F ð1; 57Þ ¼ 1:97, ns) or the audi-
tory task (R2 Change ¼ 0.03, F ð1; 57Þ ¼ 1:7, ns). In contrast, when A was entered
first, it failed to account for a significant amount of the variation on either task
(R2 ¼ 0:02, for the visual task, R2 ¼ 0:03, for the auditory task. Adding C produced
a significant increase in R2 for the visual task (R2 Change ¼ 0.13, F ð1; 57Þ ¼ 8:44,
p < 0:005) but not the auditory task (R2 Change ¼ 0.02, F ð1; 57Þ ¼ 0:97, ns).

3.4. Are children more likely than adults to make genuine action slips?

Following each condition of the word stem completion task, participants were
asked to identify the original source (seen or heard) of each word used in that con-
dition. Genuine action slips were defined as visual intrusions (i.e., incorrect use of
previously seen words in the exclusion condition) that were later identified correctly
as visually presented items. Because there were group differences in the number of
visual intrusions, we calculated the proportions of visual intrusions that were later
identified as visual items. An ANOVA on these proportions revealed a marginally
significant effect of group, F ð2; 57Þ ¼ 2:80, p < 0:07, reflecting the fact that the mean
proportion was slightly higher for children (M ¼ 0:67, SD ¼ 0.34) than for the young
adults (M ¼ 0:43, SD ¼ 0.39) and elderly adults (M ¼ 0:46, SD ¼ 0.32).
180 P.D. Zelazo et al. / Acta Psychologica 115 (2004) 167–183

4. Discussion

The present study was designed to examine age-related changes in EF across the
life span using two bidimensional sorting tasks, and to explore the extent to which
these changes could be understood in terms of corresponding changes in conscious
versus automatic influences on memory.
As expected, perseverative errors on both sorting tasks exhibited a U-shaped
function when plotted against age. On the Visually Cued Color-Shape task, both
children and older adults made more perseverative errors than the young adults.
A similar curvilinear pattern was found for the Auditorily Cued Number-Numeral
task, although the difference between the young and old adults failed to reach signif-
icance. While U-shaped developmental curves have been documented for a number
of basic cognitive processes (e.g., see Kail & Salthouse, 1994), relatively few studies
have measured EF across a wide range of ages (Bedard et al., 2002; Cepeda et al.,
2001; Comalli et al., 1962; Williams et al., 1999). The current findings––especially
from the visual sorting task––therefore add valuable support for the suggestion that
EF rises and falls across the life span (e.g., Dempster, 1992).
One challenge in the exploration of life span changes in EF is to find measures
that assess the same processes in participants across a wide range of ages. It appears
that this challenge may not have been met completely in the current study. In par-
ticular, children’s performance on the Auditorily Cued Number Numeral Task
was not significantly correlated with their performance on the Visually Cued Col-
or-Shape task––although performance on the two sorting tasks was highly correlated
for young and elderly adults. One possibility is that some children have particular
difficulty attending to the paralinguistic, auditory cues (male vs. female voice) used
in the auditory sorting task. Indeed, Morton and colleagues (Morton & Trehub,
2001; Morton, Trehub, & Zelazo, 2003) have found that young children, unlike
adults, have difficulty attending to paralinguistic information (i.e., whether an utter-
ance is spoken in a happy or a sad voice) when judging the emotion of a speaker––
even when instructed to do so. Children’s selective attention to paralinguistic cues
improves until at least 10 years of age. Therefore, individual and age-related differ-
ences in difficulty attending to the auditory cues might have affected performance on
the auditory sorting task for some children, perhaps particularly on the switch trials.
Alternatively, for those children for whom attending to the cues was particularly dif-
ficult, this task may have been confusing or simply boring.
Of course, there are other possible differences between the two sorting tasks, as
well. For example, in the visual task, the cues (i.e., X or Y ) remained present during
the entire trial whereas in the auditory task they did not. Such differences may ac-
count not only for the different correlations at different ages, but also for the differ-
ential sensitivity of the two measures to EF impairments in elderly adults.
Nonetheless, given the clear pattern of age-related changes in visual sorting across
the life span, we next sought to determine whether there were corresponding age-re-
lated changes in conscious control. To do so, we derived estimates of conscious and
unconscious influences on memory using the PDP (e.g., Jacoby, 1991). Jacoby and
colleagues have used this approach to reveal age-related declines in conscious control
 P.D. Zelazo et al. / Acta Psychologica 115 (2004) 167–183 181

associated with aging (e.g., Hay & Jacoby, 1999) but to our knowledge, the PDP has
never been used to assess changes across the life span (but see Anooshian & Seibert,
1996, for work with children). Results were as expected: conscious contributions
to memory showed a clear inverted U-shaped pattern, whereas estimates of uncon-
scious, automatic influences were constant across the three age groups tested.
This finding fits well with the results of research comparing performance on
implicit and explicit measures of memory (e.g., Naito, 1990; Russo & Parkin,
1993).
Our next step was to consider EF in relation to estimates of conscious and uncon-
scious memory. A series of regression analyses indicated that estimates of conscious
control accounted for variation in performance on the visual sorting task, but not
the auditory sorting task. Further work remains to be done to explore the differences
between the two sorting tasks, but the findings for the visual task provide prelimin-
ary support for our proposal that age-related changes in EF across the life span can
be understood in terms of underlying changes in the intentional modulation of levels
of consciousness (e.g., Zelazo, 2004) and in the ability to navigate flexibly and effec-
tively through a hierarchy of levels of representation (e.g., Craik, 2002a, 2002b).
From this perspective, both school-age children and older adults have difficulty effi-
ciently formulating hierarchical representations on the fly, accessing appropriate lev-
els of representation, and maintaining representations in working memory. These
effortful processes likely depend on the integrity of neural systems involving prefron-
tal cortex, and there is good evidence both that prefrontal cortex develops substan-
tially during the course of childhood (e.g., Anderson, Levin, & Jacobs, 2002) and
also that it declines markedly in older adulthood (e.g., Prull, Gabrieli, & Bunge,
2000).
Finally, this study also provided a preliminary test of the assumption that action
slips occur only given a failure of controlled processes (e.g., Jacoby & Kelley, 1992).
Children were marginally more likely than young and older adults to make visual
intrusions that were later identified correctly as visually presented items. Although
not significant, this finding is consistent with other evidence that children sometimes
have difficulty using consciously accessible information to control their behavior
(e.g., Zelazo et al., 1996), and it deserves to be investigated further––both because
it affects an important assumption underlying the PDP and because of its possible
implications for distinctions between levels of consciousness.

4.1. Conclusion

The results of the current study reveal the rise and fall of EF across the life span,
and they show clearly that whereas PDP estimates of conscious control follow an in-
verted U-shaped curve, estimates of automatic influences on memory remain con-
stant. The mechanisms underlying EF remain unclear, but the observed relations
between performance on the new visual sorting task and estimates of conscious
memory encourage efforts to understand EF in terms of underlying changes in the
ability to consciously set up, maintain, and access representations at the appropriate
level of complexity.
182 P.D. Zelazo et al. / Acta Psychologica 115 (2004) 167–183

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council (NSERC) of Canada to P.D. Zelazo and F.I.M. Craik. The authors
would like to thank Jennie Sawula and Dana Liebermann for their help in preparing
this article, and Ellen Bialystok for helpful comments on a previous draft.

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