This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Services Download to citation manager PubMed PubMed Citation

Executive Functions in Normal Aging: An Examination of Script Sequencing, Script Sorting, and Script Monitoring

¹ Laboratory of Psychology, University of Angers, France.
² Clinical and Research Center for Memory Disorders and Degenerative Diseases, ³ Department of Neurology, and ⁴ Unit of Clinical Gerontology, University Hospital of Angers, France.

Address correspondence to Philippe Allain, Unité de Neuropsychologie, Département de Neurologie, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire, 4 rue Larrey, 49033 Angers Cedex 01, France. E-mail: PhAllain{at}chu-angers.fr

We explored the effect of age on executive functions by using script-sequencing and script-sorting tasks. Older participants (n = 39), relative to young subjects (n = 40), committed more errors in script sequencing. However, there was no difference in performance between elderly and young subjects in excluding irrelevant items. These results suggest that aging generates impairment in the ability to produce temporally coherent sequences without deficit in the ability to eliminate distractors in the action domain. We proposed that the sequencing difficulties in elderly participants could be due to working-memory and shifting deficits mediated by changes in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.