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Adult Age Differences in the Attentional Capacity Demands of Visual Search

Publication ,  Journal Article
Madden, DJ
Published in: Cognitive Development
January 1, 1986

Four experiments investigated the ability of young (18 to 27 years) and older (59 to 76 years) adults to perform visual search and tone detection concurrently. In each experiment, the proportional increase in tone reaction time (RT) on the dual-task trials, relative to a tone-only baseline, was greater for older adults than for young adults. In contrast, the changes in tone RT that occurred as a function of the temporal interval between the tone and the visual display were similar for the young and older adults in each experiment. The age differences in tone-detection performance appeared to represent an age-related reduction in a processing resource, such as attentional capacity or effort, that is distinct from processing speed. This age-related reduction in attentional capacity was evident in the encoding and response selection processes required by the visual-search task, and in the use of advance information for improving search performance. © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Duke Scholars

Published In

Cognitive Development

DOI

ISSN

0885-2014

Publication Date

January 1, 1986

Volume

1

Issue

4

Start / End Page

335 / 363

Related Subject Headings

  • Developmental & Child Psychology
  • 5205 Social and personality psychology
  • 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology
  • 5201 Applied and developmental psychology
  • 1702 Cognitive Sciences
  • 1701 Psychology
  • 0801 Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing
 

Citation

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Madden, D. J. (1986). Adult Age Differences in the Attentional Capacity Demands of Visual Search. Cognitive Development, 1(4), 335–363. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0885-2014(86)80008-9
Madden, D. J. “Adult Age Differences in the Attentional Capacity Demands of Visual Search.” Cognitive Development 1, no. 4 (January 1, 1986): 335–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0885-2014(86)80008-9.
Madden DJ. Adult Age Differences in the Attentional Capacity Demands of Visual Search. Cognitive Development. 1986 Jan 1;1(4):335–63.
Madden, D. J. “Adult Age Differences in the Attentional Capacity Demands of Visual Search.” Cognitive Development, vol. 1, no. 4, Jan. 1986, pp. 335–63. Scopus, doi:10.1016/S0885-2014(86)80008-9.
Madden DJ. Adult Age Differences in the Attentional Capacity Demands of Visual Search. Cognitive Development. 1986 Jan 1;1(4):335–363.
Journal cover image

Published In

Cognitive Development

DOI

ISSN

0885-2014

Publication Date

January 1, 1986

Volume

1

Issue

4

Start / End Page

335 / 363

Related Subject Headings

  • Developmental & Child Psychology
  • 5205 Social and personality psychology
  • 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology
  • 5201 Applied and developmental psychology
  • 1702 Cognitive Sciences
  • 1701 Psychology
  • 0801 Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing