title: Compliance instead of flexibility? On age-related differences in cognitive control during visual search.
abstract: The effect of healthy aging on cognitive control of irrelevant visual information was investigated by using event-related potentials. Participants performed a spatial cuing task where an irrelevant color cue that was either contingent (color search) or noncontingent (shape search) on the attentional set was presented before a target with different stimulus-onset asynchronies. In the contingent condition, attentional capture appeared independent of age and persisted over the stimulus-onset asynchronies but was markedly pronounced for elderly people. Accordingly, event-related potential analyses revealed that both older and younger adults initially selected the irrelevant cue when it was contingent on the attentional set and transferred spatial cue information into working memory. However, only younger adults revealed inhibitory mechanisms to compensate for attentional capture. It is proposed that this age-related lack of reactive inhibition leads to stickiness in visual processing whenever information is contingent on the attentional set, unveiling older adults' "Achilles' heel" in cognitive control.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ergonomics, Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, TU Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany. Electronic address: mertes@ifado.de.
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Mertes
authors.affiliation: Department of Ergonomics, Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, TU Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany.
authors.forename: Edmund
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Wascher
authors.affiliation: Department of Ergonomics, Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, TU Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Schneider
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D000066492:Cognitive Aging / Q000502:physiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D003463:Cues; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology; D008875:Middle Aged; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Aging; CDA; Cognitive control; N2pc; Pd; Visual search