Performance issues
- Activations can be examined to determine which are specifically performance- versus age-related.
- When comparing patients to controls or different age groups, differences in processing strategies, arousal, effort, frustration, and emotional reactions to one's performance may interact with diagnosis or age, even in the absence of objectively-measured performance differences. Elementary, simple tasks may minimize these effects.
- Designing tasks that tap the same construct across different age groups remains a challenge for developmental studies.