Older Adults Benefit More From Flexibility When Dealing With Task Interruptions: EEG Evidence From a Working Memory Task

Interruptions are widespread in working life and increase the risk of errors. Older adults are usually more affected than younger ones, which is attributed to age-related changes in the cognitive processes needed to cope with interruptions, especially with respect to attentional control and working memory. Here, we investigated whether the benefits of prolonged or self-determined timing when dealing with interruptions, which we found in a previous study, become more pronounced with age. 28 younger (18-30 years) and 31 older participants (55-70 years) performed a retrospective cue (retro-cue) based working memory task, in which the orientations of a set of colored bars had to be remembered and retrieved in response to a retro-cue. This primary task was randomly interrupted with an arithmetic task presented before the retro-cue, with the time after the interruption and before the retro-cue being either short (500 ms), long (1500 ms), or self-determined. Interruptions impaired performance and the older group performed overall worse than the younger group. Especially the older group benefited from that flexibility, which led to an improvement in performance up to the level of the younger group. Accordingly, the EEG in the flexible condition showed an equally strong alpha activity in both groups at the time of the retro-cue, suggesting an improvement in the retrieval of task-relevant information from working memory. Overall, the study shows that in work situations in which interruptions cannot be avoided, flexibility in the timing of these interruptions can help older employees to compensate for age-related changes in cognitive abilities.