title: Clumping distractors around the target facilitates performance on the visual search task in the elderly.
abstract: Fifteen elderly participants and 15 young controls were tested on a version of the visual search task to determine if stimulus location had an effect on reaction time (RT). Location was manipulated by presenting the distractors clumped around a target or spread apart on the screen. Elderly participants performed worse overall. Clumping proved to be an important manipulation in the target absent (p < .001), but not the target present, condition. The manipulation of array size (6 versus 12 distractors) proved significant regardless of probe presence (p < .001) or absence (p < .001). Since clumping the distractors significantly improved the search times in the elderly, this suggests that a deficit in attention contributes to an inefficient search strategy in the elderly.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
authors.forename: Elise J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Levinoff
authors.forename: Paraskevi V
authors.initials: PV
authors.lastname: Rekkas
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Murtha
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*