Age effects on a nonverbal auditory sustained attention task.
A nonverbal auditory test of sustained attention was administered to 20 young and 20 elderly women, screened to ensure good health. Groups were matched for intelligence. Older subjects performed as accurately as younger subjects. Neither group showed increases in response latency as a function of time spent on test. Older subjects took longer to respond than younger subjects, but only for a particular combination of stimulus duration and order of presenting stimulus durations. When subjects were presented long tones first, there was no difference in response latency associated with age or stimulus duration. When short tones were presented first, older subjects were slower than younger subjects in both duration conditions and in response to long tones were slower than all other subjects.
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D011930:Reaction Time