Age-related increase in top-down activation of visual features

Abstract

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.

This research was supported by Grants R37 AG002163, R01 AG011622, and T32 000029 from the National Institute on Aging. We are grateful to Susanne M. Harris, Sara Moore, and Leslie Crandell Dawes for technical assistance.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julia Spaniol

Julia Spaniol is now at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Centre, Toronto

Barbara Bucur

Barbara Bucur is now at the Department of Psychology, University of Missouri, St. Louis.