Older adults preserve accuracy but not precision in explicit and implicit rhythmic timing

Abstract

Aging brings with it several forms of neurophysiological and cognitive deterioration, but whether a decline in temporal processing is part of the aging process is unclear. The current study investigated whether this timing deficit has a cause independent of those of memory and attention using rhythmic stimuli that reduce the demand for these higher cognitive functions. In Study 1, participants took part in two rhythmic timing tasks: explicit and implicit. Participants had to distinguish regular from irregular sequences while processing temporal information explicitly or implicitly. Results showed that while the accuracy in the implicit timing task was preserved, older adults had more noise in their performance in the explicit and implicit tasks. In Study 2, participants took part in a dual-implicit task to explore whether the performance of temporal tasks differed with increasing task difficulty. We found that increasing task difficulty magnifies age-related differences.