Affective processes appraise the salience of external stimuli preparing the agent for action. So far, the relationship between stimuli, affect, and action has been mainly studied in highly controlled laboratory conditions. In order to find the generalization of this relationship to social interaction, we assess the influence of the salience of…

Old age is associated with poorer movement skill, as indexed by reduced speed and accuracy. Nevertheless, reductions in speed and accuracy can also reflect compensation as well as deficit. We used a manual tracing and a driving task to identify generalized spatial and temporal compensations and deficits associated with old age. In Experiment 1,…

Five psychological refractory period (PRP) experiments were conducted with an especially time-consuming first task (Experiments 1, 3, and 5: mental rotation; Experiments 2 and 4: memory scanning) and with equal emphasis on the first task and on the second (left-right tone judgment). The standard design with varying stimulus onset asynchronies…