SynthesisPsychonomic bulletin & review2018
Inhibition in aging: What is preserved? What declines? A meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 123 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
123 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Strategy and processing speed eclipse individual differences in control ability in conflict tasks.Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition · 2022Pooled it
- Age differences in sustained attention tasks: A meta-analysis.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2021Pooled it
- Depression and episodic memory across the adult lifespan: A meta-analytic review.Psychological bulletin · 2021Pooled it
- An event-related potential (ERP) study of the transfer of response inhibition training to interference control.Experimental brain research · 2021Trial
- Has stopping stopped making sense? Disentangling the processes elicited by complex action cancellation paradigms.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Review
- A neurodevelopmental model of eating disorder risk in midlife to older adulthood.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2026Review
- Exploring age-related inhibitory deficits in auditory attention: Evidence from attention switching.Psychological research · 2026Article
- Math and verbal fluency across adulthood provide insights into aging and individual differences.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- β-Bursting as a Sensitive Neural Marker of Inhibitory Control in Healthy Older Adults: A Linear Mixed-Effects Modeling and Threshold-Free Cluster Approach.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Cognitive and motor inhibition in balance-related tasks: task-specific associations with executive and physical functions in young and older adults.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Adult lifespan normative data (18-92 years) for executive function tests; the Stroop colour word test, COWAT and Hayling sentence completion test.Journal of neuropsychology · 2026Article
- When Alzheimer's pathology meets cardiometabolic risk: intrinsic subcortical-cortical connectivity signatures of retroactive interference in aging.Alzheimer's research & therapy · 2026Article
- Faster to react, slower to move: differential effects of multisensory facilitation on movement initiation and execution across the adult lifespan.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- The correlation between physical exercise and cognitive function in older adults with cognitive impairment mediated by inhibitory control and possible cognitive processing mechanisms.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- The auditory trap: early semantic conflict and late monitoring breakdown drive false memories in cognitive aging.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Investigating age-related differences in semantic control mechanisms involved in creative cognition.Memory & cognition · 2026Article
- Muscle bursting and corticomotor excitability mark impaired impulse control in Parkinson's disease.NPJ Parkinson's disease · 2025Article
- Eye movement evidence for locus coeruleus-noradrenaline system contributions to age differences in attention.Psychology and aging · 2025Article
- A comprehensive study of cognitive control in healthy aging.Communications medicine · 2025Article
- Proactive control declines while reactive control is preserved across the adult lifespan.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2025Article
63 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Aging has been assumed to go along with deficient inhibitory processes in cognitive performance. According to this inhibition deficit hypothesis, older adults are less able to suppress or ignore irrelevant thoughts and actions than young adults are. This hypothesis has been investigated in a large number of studies. We conducted a meta-analysis to determine whether there is an inhibition deficit in older age and whether this deficit is general or task-specific. We selected 176 studies in which young and older adults were tested on tasks commonly assumed to measure inhibition (i.e., the color Stroop, flanker, Simon, stop-signal, go/no-go, global-local, positive and negative compatibility tasks, as well as the paradigm assessing n-2 repetition costs in task switching). For most tasks (i.e., the color Stroop, flanker, and local tasks, as well as the n-2 repetition costs), the results speak against an inhibition deficit in older age. Only in a few tasks (i.e., the go/no-go and stop-signal tasks), older adults showed impaired inhibition. Moreover, for four tasks (i.e., the Simon, global, positive and negative compatibility tasks), the results suggest that more studies are necessary to draw a firm conclusion. Together, the present findings call into question the hypothesis of a general inhibition deficit in older age.
Indexed as
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29019064What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.