Effects of stimulus integrality on visual attention in older and younger adults: a quantitative model-based analysis.
Twenty-one older and 21 younger adults were administered a series of visual attention tasks. A series of quantitative models was applied to each observer's data to determine whether he or she performed optimally or suboptimally or showed a deficit-in-attentional processing. The results suggested that (a) older and younger observers were affected equally by the integrality-separability manipulation, (b) there are no age-related differences in selective attention performance for either integral or separable-dimension stimuli, (c) there are no age-related differences in dimensional integration performance with separable-dimension stimuli, and (d) older observers were more likely to be suboptimal when asked to integrate information from integral-dimension stimuli. Implications for current theories of attentional processing in normal aging are discussed.
Maddox
W T
WT
Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin 78712, USA. maddox@psy.utexas.edu
Filoteo
J V
JV
Huntington
J R
JR
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time; D012858:Size Perception