Adult age differences in learning on a sequentially cued prediction task.

OBJECTIVES Much of adaptive behavior relies on the ability to learn and generate predictions about relationships in the environment. Research on aging suggests both that there is an age deficit in the ability to learn sequential relationships and that this deficit in learning could underlie age differences reported in many decision-making tasks. This article introduces the Triplets Prediction Task (TPT) to investigate the learning of sequential relationships that underlies adaptive behavior. METHOD In the TPT, participants see 2 successive visual cues and then predict which target will follow. Unknown to participants, there is a predictive relationship between the first cue and the target such that each of 4 cues predicts 1 of 4 targets 85% of the time. RESULTS Although both age groups demonstrated learning on this task, an age deficit in learning appeared early and performance differences persisted throughout training. There was also evidence of age differences in the learning systems engaged during the task. DISCUSSION These results are consistent with previous studies of learning and prediction, and they support the growing literature showing adult age differences in decision making from experience.