title: Does aging affect the allocation of visual attention in global and local information processing?
abstract: The earliest studies of Navon (1977) showed that in certain conditions the visual perception of hierarchical stimuli generates a global precedence effect. This hypothesis is based on the joint occurrence of two effects: a response time (RT) advantage for identifying global targets and interference by global distractors when responding to a local target. The aim of the present study was to determine the involvement of attentional mechanisms and whether certain aspects are specifically altered by normal aging. In a selective-attention task, a complete global precedence effect was found for young and old subjects. However, for the old subjects, global interference on local identification was more pronounced than for the young subjects. In a divided-attention task, the RT advantage was affected by attention shifts between global and local forms for both young and old subjects, but the global interference effect did not change.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Neuropsychology, Université de la Méditerranée, 27 Boulevard Jean Moulin, 13 385 Marseille Cedex 05, France.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Roux
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ceccaldi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011897:Random Allocation; D011930:Reaction Time; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*