How ageing changes the mnemonic bias of visual behaviour

ABSTRACT

Ageing is associated with deficits in cognitive control, including attention and working memory processes. However, how ageing influences the interactions between these cognitive systems is not well understood. The present study compared the oculomotor behaviour and search performance of two different age groups in a well-established memory-guided visual selection paradigm. The results show that ageing can lead to impairments in the way memory representations bias the control of attention, which notably dissociate in the early stages of oculomotor orientation in search and the later process of attentional disengagement from memory distracters. The implications of these findings for theories of cognitive ageing are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Memory
• attention
• ageing
• eye movements

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

DS acknowledges support from the Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres/Units of Excellence in R&D (SEV-2015-490) and project grant PSI2016-76443-P (METAAWARE) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER).