Is flanker-based inhibition related to age? Identifying specific influences of individual differences on neurocognitive variables

Researchers frequently attempt to identify the specific neurocognitive processes that might be responsible for differences in performance associated with neurological status or other individual difference characteristics by administering two or more conditions of an experimental task to different groups of participants, and focusing on the group-by-condition interaction as the primary outcome of interest. Three limitations of this approach are discussed, and an alternative analytical method is proposed to overcome the limitations. The method is demonstrated in analyses of data from 10 cognitive tasks in two independent studies, including two flanker tasks which are often used to assess aspects of inhibition. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.