Age-related increase in top-down activation of visual features.
Previous research suggests that, during visual search and discrimination tasks, older adults place greater emphasis than younger adults on top-down attention. This experiment investigated the relative contribution of target activation and distractor inhibition to this age difference. Younger and older adults performed a singleton discrimination task in which either an E or an R target (colour singleton) was present among distractor letters. Relative to a baseline condition in which the colours of the targets and distractors remained constant, an age-related slowing of performance was evident when either the colour of the target or that of the distractors varied across trials. The age-related slowing was more pronounced in response to target colour variation, suggesting that older adults place relatively greater emphasis on the top-down activation of target features.
Madden
David J
DJ
Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710, USA. djm@geri.duke.edu
Spaniol
Julia
J
Bucur
Barbara
B
Whiting
Wythe L
WL
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception