Activation, Inhibition, or Something Else: An Exploratory Study on Response Priming Using Moving Dots as Primes in Middle-Aged and Old Adults

Table 1

Mean response times (in ms; SD in parentheses) of the compatible, the incompatible, and the neutral conditions as well as the compatibility effects (incompatible–compatible; in ms; SE in parentheses; discrepancies due to rounding differences) for each SOA (147 versus 360 ms) × Motion Type (single-dot versus row-of-dots) × Age Group (middle-aged, old) condition. Additionally, the effects of young participants (MED_age = 22 years, ranging from 18 to 47) in the single-dot ([12], Exp. 1, 147 and 360 ms SOA conditions) and row-of-dots ([9], Exp. 3) conditions from experiments published in previous papers with the same conditions as in the current experiment are presented for a direct comparison.

	Young (results from previous papers)		Middle aged								Old age
	Single-dot motion type	Row-of-dots motion type	Single-dot motion type				Row-of-dots motion type				Single-dot motion type				Row-of-dots motion type
	Effect	Effect	Compatible	Incompatible	Neutral	Effect	Compatible	Incompatible	Neutral	Effect	Compatible	Incompatible	Neutral	Effect	Compatible	Incompatible	Neutral	Effect
147 ms SOA	37 (3.9)	11 (3.6)	429 (66.3)	467 (73.3)	452 (63.3)	38 (4.7)	466 (53.2)	476 (37.4)	466 (38.7)	10 (7.9)	429 (64.8)	485 (47.6)	457 (53.3)	56 (7.2)	464 (63.0)	475 (59.4)	464 (66.5)	12 (8.7)
360 ms SOA	16 (6.6)	−11 (3.2)	406 (31.7)	431 (30.9)	421 (32.6)	26 (6.4)	440 (34.6)	424 (27.9)	434 (27.5)	−15 (5.8)	456 (30.9)	456 (39.0)	447 (33.2)	0 (10.7)	465 (47.2)	463 (61.5)	473 (61.4)	−2 (8.7)