A Systematic Review and a Meta-Analysis of Age-Related Differences in Inhibitory Control on the Flanker Task
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Aging is associated with declines in cognitive functions, particularly inhibitory control. The flanker task is widely used to assess this function; however, research findings on age-related differences remain inconsistent. OBJECTIVE: This systematic review and meta-analysis synthesizes findings comparing young and older adults across different versions of the flanker task. METHODS: A total of 22 studies were selected from PsycInfo, PubMed and PsycNet. RESULTS: The results show that older adults exhibit slower reaction times, particularly on incongruent trials. However, differences in accuracy between both groups remain inconsistent. Our systematic review indicates that variability across studies likely stems from differences in participant demographics, cognitive screening protocols, task design, and statistical approaches. Task variations, such as stimulus type (arrows, letters, or moving stimuli), cueing conditions, and spatial arrangements, significantly influence interference effects. Furthermore, methodological differences in the computation of inhibition cost scoring also contribute to discrepancies in findings. Meta-analytical results reveal that the arrow flanker task produced the most consistent age-related differences. In contrast, letter-based and cued versions exhibited greater variability. CONCLUSIONS: Future research should standardize task protocols, refine statistical methods, and explore novel adaptations such as dynamic stimuli to better understand inhibitory control changes in aging. Addressing these inconsistencies will enhance our ability to identify age-related inhibitory difficulties and develop targeted interventions to mitigate cognitive decline.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.029 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.010 | 0.013 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".