Sequential effects on speeded information processing: A developmental study

Lifespan Changes in Global and Selective Stopping and Performance Adjustments

“…Verbruggen et al (2008) argued that the goal to stop on successful inhibits replaces the go goal on the following go trial if the stimulus is repeated. In previous studies we examined age-related changes in trial-by-trial sequential effects (Melis et al, 2002; Smulders et al, 2005). This research showed that relatively long intervals between trials (i.e., >500 ms) are associated with a repetition benefit for young children (Smulders et al, 2005) and an alternation benefit for young and elderly adults (Melis et al, 2002).…”

“…In previous studies we examined age-related changes in trial-by-trial sequential effects (Melis et al, 2002; Smulders et al, 2005). This research showed that relatively long intervals between trials (i.e., >500 ms) are associated with a repetition benefit for young children (Smulders et al, 2005) and an alternation benefit for young and elderly adults (Melis et al, 2002). The former has been interpreted in terms of automatic facilitation or priming and the latter has been taken to be a manifestation of subjective expectancy (e.g., Gao et al, 2009).…”

“…Assuming that both children (e.g., Huizinga and van der Molen, 2010; Somerville and Casey, 2010) and the elderly (e.g., West and Schwarb, 2006; Mayda et al, 2011) are less efficient in implementing control procedures, we assumed that the response slowing associated with proactive and reactive control would be more pronounced in these age groups compared to young adults. Finally, it was predicted that the slowing associated with repetition priming would be more pronounced for children than adults based on recent findings indicating that the effects of repetition priming decrease when children are growing older (e.g., Crone et al, 2004; Smulders et al, 2005) and less pronounced or even absent for the elderly based on the repetition priming literature showing that repetition priming effects are basically age-invariant during senescence (e.g., Fleischman, 2007; Bergerbest et al, 2009, for reviews).…”

Knowing What to Respond in the Future Does Not Cancel the Influence of Past Events

“…Subjective expectancies are commonly defined as strategic, top-down influences on motor reaction-times [6]–[8]. Based on the distinction between passive or automatic expectancies and active or conscious expectancies [9], sequential effects observed at long RSIs are thought to be caused by active variants of expectancy [10], [11].…”

“…That is, as suggested by [9], passive or automatic expectancies produce processing benefits for expected events but no costs for unexpected ones whereas active expectancies produce both benefits and costs. Specifically, active expectancies in two-choice random tasks have been often related to probabilistic fallacies as the gamblers fallacy (the irrational belief that alternations are more frequent than repetitions in random series of two, equally likely events [3], [8]) and the continuation of the run fallacy (the irrational belief that local regularities, runs of either repetitions or alternations, tend to continue [7]). See also [12] for an introduction to these probabilistic fallacies.…”