Several studies have reported age-related differences in time estimation, which have been attributed either to a slowing of the pacemaker rate with aging or to impaired attention and/or working resources in older adults. Here, we compared performance of young and older participants on time production/reproduction tasks and on working memory, divided attention, sustained attention and executive attention tasks. Results showed that relative to young participants, older adults significantly under-reproduced and tended to over-produce target durations. Neither attention nor working memory predicted time reproduction and production performance. Conversely, when temporal variability was considered, participants' temporal variability in time production tasks was exclusively accounted for by age, whereas variability in temporal reproduction was also explained by divided attention and working memory. Overall, our results extend previous investigations on timing abilities in the elderly and underscore the importance of divided attention and working memory in the maintenance of a stable representation of durations.

中文翻译：

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时间产生和繁殖任务中与年龄有关的变化：注意力和工作记忆过程的参与。

几项研究报告了与年龄相关的时间估计差异，这归因于起搏器速率随年龄的增长而降低，或归因于老年人注意力和/或工作资源的削弱。在这里，我们比较了年轻和年长参与者在时间生产/复制任务以及工作记忆，分散注意力，持续注意力和执行者注意力任务方面的表现。结果表明，相对于年轻参与者，老年人的生殖能力明显偏低，并且往往会超出目标持续时间。注意力和工作记忆都无法预测时间再现和生产性能。相反，当考虑时间变异性时，参与者在时间生产任务中的时间变异性仅是按年龄计算的，而时间复制的变异性也可以通过注意力分散和工作记忆来解释。总的来说，我们的研究结果扩展了以前对老年人计时能力的研究，并强调了分散注意力和工作记忆对维持持续时间稳定的重要性。