# THE ORGANIZATION OF COGNITIVE PROCESSES IN OLD AGE

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES · 1991 · $107,412

## Abstract

This project will identify mechanisms underlying age-related changes in
cognition.  Two general hypotheses as to the specific nature of these
mechanisms will guide the research.  Under one hypothesis, inhibitory
processes become less effective in older adults, while under the other,
age weakens the strength of connections between the units of memory, so
that activity transmitted from one unit to another declines with age.
Empirical support for one or the other hypothesis that will emerge from
the proposed research promises to have a major impact on the field.
     By examining a series of phenomena that have rarely if ever been
examined in older adults, e.g., repetition blindness, illusory
conjunctions, effects of delayed and amplified auditory feedback and the
relative ability to perceive vs. produce speech, the project promises to
fill several gaps in our knowledge.  Moreover, the project focuses on
tasks and phenomena where older adults are predicted to exhibit superior
performance to younger adults, unlike previous work where declines in the
abilities of older adults have been the main focus.  The project also
carries theoretical and practical implications for many areas of
cognitive psychology, including seemingly unrelated areas such as word
retrieval failures, and the etiology of stuttering.  Finally, the project
will develop a testable and well specified model of aging and cognition
that is computational in nature.
     Five sets of studies are proposed.  The first two sets compare the
perceptual errors of young and older subjects in detecting rapidly
presented letters and acoustically presented words.  A third set examines
the effects of aging on experimentally induced errors in production.  A
fourth set compares the ability to comprehend vs. produce speech in young
and older adults to determine why production processes tend to become
impaired with aging, whereas comprehension processes remain relatively
intact.  The fifth set of studies will develop computer simulations of
how cognitive processes change with age.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 3121648
- **Project number:** 1R01AG009755-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
- **SAM.gov UEI:** RN64EPNH8JC6
- **Principal Investigator:** DONALD G MACKAY
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 1991
- **Award amount:** $107,412
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 1991-05-06 → 1994-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/3121648

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 3121648, THE ORGANIZATION OF COGNITIVE PROCESSES IN OLD AGE (1R01AG009755-01). Retrieved via MORVS 2026-10-25 from https://api.morvs.ai/grant/nih/3121648. Licensed CC0.

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