title: Aging and shifts of visual attention in saccadic eye movements.
abstract: The authors examined age-related differences in target discrimination before the saccade to investigate the influence of aging on the facilitation of target discrimination by shifts of attention. Older and younger adults made saccades toward a peripheral stimulus after its onset and discriminated the orientation of the stimulus. Mean saccadic latency was greater for older adults than for younger adults. Facilitation of target discrimination immediately before the saccades was found both in older and younger adults. These results suggest that aging affects the properties of saccades but does not affect the properties of attentional shifts immediately before a saccade.
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan. r.kaneko@aist.go.jp
authors.forename: Rika
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kaneko
authors.forename: Yasuyoshi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kuba
authors.forename: Yoko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sakata
authors.forename: Yasuo
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kuchinomachi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology* / Q000523:psychology; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D012438:Saccades; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014796:Visual Perception