Age-related increase in top-down activation of visual features.
Published
Journal Article
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.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Madden, DJ; Spaniol, J; Bucur, B; Whiting, WL
Published Date
- May 2007
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 60 / 5
Start / End Page
- 644 - 651
PubMed ID
- 17455072
Pubmed Central ID
- 17455072
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 1747-0218
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1080/17470210601154347
Language
- eng
Conference Location
- England