SynthesisPsychological research2023
The effect of age on task switching: updated and extended meta-analyses.
Synthesis in Psychological research, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The role of cue transparency in task switching: an SDM-PSI meta-analysis in healthy adults.Brain imaging and behavior · 2026Pooled it
- Acute effects of psilocybin on attention and executive functioning in healthy volunteers: a systematic review and multilevel meta-analysis.Psychopharmacology · 2025Pooled it
- Temporal redistribution of control reveals age-related differences in task switching at the level of preparation.Psychological research · 2026Article
- A neurodevelopmental model of eating disorder risk in midlife to older adulthood.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2026Review
- Math and verbal fluency across adulthood provide insights into aging and individual differences.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Midlife modulation of task switching brain activity reveals age specific neural adaptation.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Slower transitions between control states lead to reductions in cognitive flexibility over the lifespan.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Exploring the effects of mapping rule switching on motor preparation in young and older adults: evidence from combining response cuing and task switching methodology.Psychological research · 2025Article
- Development of the Flexibility in Daily Life scale to measure multidimensional cognitive and behavioural flexibility in health and disease.The British journal of clinical psychology · 2025Article
- Cognitive flexibility in aging: the impact of age range and task difficulty on local switch costs in task switching.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2025Article
- Impact of aging on crossmodal attention switching.Psychological research · 2024Article
- Insights into control over cognitive flexibility from studies of task-switching.Current opinion in behavioral sciences · 2024Article
- Cognitive aging at work and in daily life-a narrative review on challenges due to age-related changes in central cognitive functions.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Review
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
Abstract
Cognitive flexibility is one of the crucial abilities for human survival. As people get older, whether their flexibility ability will be affected is one of the core research topics in aging research. Researchers have developed a task-switch paradigm in laboratories to mimic daily-life shifting task-set scenarios. However, the empirical evidence is equivocal. Considering every single study may have a biased sample; therefore, we hoped to combine smaller studies, making them into one extensive investigation, which may help show an actual effect. In the current study, we used two meta-analysis techniques, the Brinley plot (along with the State-trace plot) and conventional meta-analysis, to re-evaluate whether healthy aging influences cognitive flexibility. The results of the Brinley plot analysis showed no evidence of switch-specific age-related impairment as indexed by the local switch cost. Yet, older adults performed more slowly than younger adults across task conditions. The conventional meta-analysis further showed that the currently available findings were heterogenous and exhibited publication bias. Therefore, this study suggests that researchers should interpret their results cautiously while using a task-switching paradigm to address older adults' shifting abilities. More parametric variables must be considered and developed in a task-switching paradigm to enhance its sensitivity and reveal older adults' actual shifting ability.
Indexed as
Identifiers
36729159What 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.