In our modern aging society, individuals are required to maintain functional independence well into old age. Cognitive deficits associated with aging can therefore have a detrimental impact on everyday functioning and quality of life. Hence, it is essential to better understand how cognitive processes change during healthy and pathological aging.

This symposium addresses this question by examining age-related changes in associative memory, arithmetic processing, and multitasking. Complementing experimental research methods, event-related potentials and multinomial modeling approaches were employed to identify the underlying mechanisms subserving cognitive functions. The presented studies involve a wide range of samples, spanning from non-clinical samples (healthy older adults) compared to younger adults to subclinical (older adults with subjective cognitive decline) and clinical samples (Parkinson’s disease with or without cognitive impairment) compared to healthy controls. This methodological variety reflects the opportunities and challenges in the research field on cognitive aging.