Does dividing attention become harder with age? findings from the divided attention questionnaire

We developed a self-assessment scale, the Divided Attention Questionnaire (DAQ), to investigate whether adults report that dividing attention between two activities becomes more difficult with increasing age, as would be predicted by a model of age-related reductions in inhibition (Hasher & Zacks, 1988). the DAQ difficulty rating scale produced satisfactory estimates of internal consistency and test-retest stability. Older adults, relative to young adults, rated most combinations of activities as more difficult, and also reported that most combinations had become more difficult over time. However, self-perceptions of ability in old age varied with task domain, such that activities that involved monitoring of novel information became increasingly difficult with advanced age, while routine activities and those involving speech processing showed little change across the older groups studied. We suggest that belieft about self-efficacy under conditions of divided attention can have important consequences for the behavior of the elderly.