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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Neuropsychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1561417
This article is part of the Research Topic Methodological and Technical Issues of Tele-neuropsychology: Remote Cognitive Assessment and Intervention Across the Life Span. View all 5 articles
Web-Based Assessment of Dual-Task Costs At Different Ages: An Analysis Across Cognitive Domains
Provisionally accepted
Vincenzo Livoti 1,2
Fiorella Del Popolo Cristaldi 2
Giulio Contemori 2
Maria Silvia Saccani 2
Mario Bonato 1,2*- 1 Padua Neuroscience Center, University of Padua, Padua, Italy
- 2 Department of General Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Veneto, Italy
Understanding the trajectories of cognitive aging provides important insights that might also be potentially useful for the early detection of cognitive impairments. Among many, multitasking abilities are particularly relevant in everyday life contexts across the adult lifespan. We used web-based, self-administered, dual-tasks to investigate age-related changes in dual-task costs (DTCs), accounting for the influence of cognitive efficiency and cognitive reserve. We also tested whether DTCs were task-specific or related to general abilities by employing three dual-tasks, each focused on different cognitive functions. We measured the performance of a sample of 419 Italian-speaking healthy participants (18-76 years old) in: (i) a digital version of the Trail Making Test (A+B); (ii) the divided-attention subtest of the Test of Attentional Performance battery, adapted for online administration; (iii) a mnestic dual-task, validated in previous studies with healthy younger and older adults. Results showed that with increasing age and cognitive load performance significantly reduced across all tasks. Non-linear age-related increase in DTCs was also observed. Global cognitive functioning and cognitive reserve demonstrated a weak, negative association with DTCs across all tasks, suggesting a secondary role in mediating multitasking performance. DTCs correlations across tasks were very weak, supporting the hypothesis of task-specificity for multitasking abilities. These findings highlight the feasibility of web-based testing while also emphasizing the heterogeneity of age-related cognitive decline and the lack of common patterns between task-specific processes and individual differences in dual-task performance.
Keywords: multitasking, Aging, life-span, dual-task costs, Web-based assessment
Received: 15 Jan 2025; Accepted: 02 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Livoti, Del Popolo Cristaldi, Contemori, Saccani and Bonato. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Mario Bonato, Department of General Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, 35122, Veneto, Italy
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