Claims

Young adults outperformed old adults in all goal conditions, but the age difference was much smaller under nonspecific goals

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · q3 peer-reviewed experiment
Currency · newest study 2001 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims

Reading the evidence codes

q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.

This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.

q3 i? Young adults outperformed old participants in all conditions, yet the performance differences were much smaller in the nonspecific goal conditions. → Paas 2001

q3 i? The presence of a specific goal disproportionately compromises elderly people's performance, and its absence disproportionately enhances it, in computerized maze learning. → Paas 2001

Evidence

Paas 2001

Paas, F., Camp, G., & Rikers, R.M.J.P. (2001). Instructional compensation for age-related cognitive declines: Effects of goal specificity in maze learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(1), 181-186. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.93.1.181

q3 · i?

In the maze-learning experiment with 40 young and 40 old adults, the article reports that "young adults outperformed old participants in all conditions" while the differences were "much smaller in the nonspecific goal conditions."

"Although young adults outperformed old participants in all conditions, these differences were much smaller in the nonspecific goal conditions."

Discussion

Page metadata
Field Value
type claim
id age-gap-smaller-nonspecific-goal-conditions
aliases specific-goal-disproportionately-compromises-older-adults
title Young adults outperformed old adults in all goal conditions, but the age difference was much smaller under nonspecific goals
description Young adults outperformed old adults in all goal conditions, but the age difference was much smaller under nonspecific goals
status review
evidence_strength moderate
newest_evidence 2001
generated by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-24
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 1 — paas-2001

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