title: Age similarities in the inertial properties of attention.
abstract: Adult age differences in the mode of allocation of visual attention were investigated, using a visual search task with a circular display containing one target letter and seven distractor letters. In two experiments, a total of 56 younger adults (M = 20 years) and 56 older adults (M = 66 years) searched for a target appearing with equal probability at one of two cued locations. The first cue appeared 115 msec before display onset, and the second cue appeared with display onset; distance between the two cued locations was varied. Target identification performance indicated that attention was inertial, in that reaction time for second-cued targets was related either to the area of the portion of the visual field containing possible target locations or to the mean path length of a serial self-terminating search. There were no age-related decrements in the allocation of visual attention.
authors.affiliation: Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina 27710, USA. lrg@geri.duke.edu
authors.forename: L R
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Gottlob
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Madden
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003463:Cues; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014836:Volition / Q000502:physiology*