title: Audiovisual temporal discrimination is less efficient with aging: an event-related potential study.
abstract: We investigated the crossmodal temporal discrimination deficit characterizing older adults and its event-related potential (electroencephalogram) correlates using an audiovisual temporal order judgment task. Audiovisual stimuli were presented at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) of 70 or 270 ms. Older were less accurate than younger adults with an SOA of 270 ms but not 70 ms. With an SOA of 270 ms only, older adults had smaller posterior P1 and frontocentral N1 amplitudes for visual stimuli in auditory-visual trials and auditory stimuli in visual-auditory trials, respectively. These results suggest a deficit in cross-sensory processing with aging reflected at the behavioural and neural level, and suggest an impairment in switching between modalities even when the inputs are separated by long temporal intervals.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
authors.forename: Annalisa
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Setti
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Finnigan
authors.forename: Rory
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sobolewski
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: McLaren
authors.forename: Ian H
authors.initials: IH
authors.lastname: Robertson
authors.forename: Richard B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Reilly
authors.forename: Rose Anne
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Kenny
authors.forename: Fiona N
authors.initials: FN
authors.lastname: Newell
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult