title: Aging: a switch from automatic to controlled processing of sounds?
abstract: In this article, the authors show that aging differentially affects peoples' ability to automatically and voluntarily process auditory information. Young, middle-aged, and older adults matched behaviorally in an auditory discrimination task showed similar patterns of neural activity indexing the voluntary and conscious detection of deviant (i.e., target) stimuli. In contrast, a negative wave indexing automatic processing (the mismatch negativity) was elicited only in young adults for near-threshold stimuli. These results indicate that aging affects the ability to automatically register small changes in a stream of homogeneous stimuli. However, this age-related decline in automatic detection of small change in the auditor environment can be compensated for by top-down controlled processes.
authors.affiliation: Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, Toronto, ON, Canada. calain@rotman-baycrest.on.ca
authors.forename: Claude
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Alain
authors.forename: Kelly L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: McDonald
authors.forename: Jodi M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Ostroff
authors.forename: Bruce
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Schneider
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D001332:Automatism; D001364:Awareness; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes; D008875:Middle Aged; D010700:Phonetics; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D013067:Speech Perception; D014796:Visual Perception