scholarly journals Selective Age Effects on Visual Attention and Motor Attention during a Cued Saccade Task

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy E. Huddleston ◽  
Brad E. Ernest ◽  
Kevin G. Keenan
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Inverse Relation ◽  
Complex Environments ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Attentional Resources ◽  
Easy Condition ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Saccade Task ◽  
Correct Saccade

Objective. Visual information is often used to guide purposeful movement. However, older adults have impaired responses to visual information, leading to increased risk for injuries and potential loss of independence. We evaluated distinct visual and motor attention contributions to a cued saccade task to determine the extent to which aging selectively affects these processes.Methods. Nineteen healthy young (18–28 years) and 20 older (60–90 years) participants performed a cued saccade task under two conditions. We challenged motor attention by changing the number of possible saccade targets (1 or 6).Results. Older adults had difficulty in inhibiting unwanted eye movements and had greater eye movement inaccuracy in the hard condition when compared to the younger adults and to the easy condition. Also, an inverse relation existed between performance on the visual and motor components of the task in older adults, unlike younger adults.Conclusions. Older adults demonstrated difficulty in both inhibiting irrelevant saccade targets and selecting correct saccade endpoints during more complex tasks. The shift in relations among attention measures between the younger and older participants may indicate a need to prioritize attentional resources with age. These changes may impact an older adult’s ability to function in complex environments.

scholarly journals Aging and Sensitivity to Illusory Target Motion With or Without Secondary Tasks

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 227-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alix L. de Dieuleveult ◽  
Anne-Marie Brouwer ◽  
Petra C. Siemonsma ◽  
Jan B. F. van Erp ◽  
Eli Brenner
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
Older Individuals ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Secondary Tasks ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
The Right ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
Background Motion

Older individuals seem to find it more difficult to ignore inaccurate sensory cues than younger individuals. We examined whether this could be quantified using an interception task. Twenty healthy young adults (age 18–34) and twenty-four healthy older adults (age 60–82) were asked to tap on discs that were moving downwards on a screen with their finger. Moving the background to the left made the discs appear to move more to the right. Moving the background to the right made them appear to move more to the left. The discs disappeared before the finger reached the screen, so participants had to anticipate how the target would continue to move. We examined how misjudging the disc’s motion when the background moves influenced tapping. Participants received veridical feedback about their performance, so their sensitivity to the illusory motion indicates to what extent they could ignore the task-irrelevant visual information. We expected older adults to be more sensitive to the illusion than younger adults. To investigate whether sensorimotor or cognitive load would increase this sensitivity, we also asked participants to do the task while standing on foam or counting tones. Background motion influenced older adults more than younger adults. The secondary tasks did not increase the background’s influence. Older adults might be more sensitive to the moving background because they find it more difficult to ignore irrelevant sensory information in general, but they may rely more on vision because they have less reliable proprioceptive and vestibular information.

scholarly journals Reliance on central vs. peripheral vision for visual search in younger and older adults

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Sophie Laurin ◽  
Julie Ouerfelli-Éthier ◽  
Laure Pisella ◽  
Aarlenne Zein Khan
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Visual Search ◽  
Peripheral Vision ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Central Vision ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Serial Search ◽  
Attentional Resources ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
Fixation Durations

Older adults show declines performing visual search, but their nature is unclear. We propose that it is related to greater attentional reliance on central vision. To investigate this, we tested how occluding central vision would affect younger and older adults in visual search. Participants (14 younger, M = 21.6 years; 16 older, M = 69.6 years) performed pop-out and serial search tasks in full view and with different sized gaze-contingent artificial central scotomas (no scotoma, 3°, 5° or 7° diameter).In pop-out search, older adults showed longer search times for peripheral targets during full viewing. Their reaction times, saccades and fixation durations also increased as a function of scotoma size, contrary to younger adults. These declines may reflect a relative impairment in peripheral visual attention for global processing in aging.In serial search, despite older adults being generally slower, we found no difference between groups in reaction time increases for eccentric targets and for bigger scotomas. These results may come from the difficulty of serial search, in which both groups used centrally limited attentional windows.We conclude that older adults allocate more attentional resources towards central vision compared to younger adults, impairing their peripheral processing primarily in pop-out visual search.

scholarly journals The Effect of Stimulus Valence on Lexical Retrieval in Younger and Older Adults

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (7) ◽  
pp. 2081-2089 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deena Schwen Blackett ◽  
Stacy M. Harnish ◽  
Jennifer P. Lundine ◽  
Alexandra Zezinka ◽  
Eric W. Healy
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Naming Latency ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Lexical Retrieval ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Attentional Resources ◽  
Negative Images ◽  
Naming Latencies

Purpose Although there is evidence that emotional valence of stimuli impacts lexical processes, there is limited work investigating its specific impact on lexical retrieval. The current study aimed to determine the degree to which emotional valence of pictured stimuli impacts naming latencies in healthy younger and older adults. Method Eighteen healthy younger adults and 18 healthy older adults named positive, negative, and neutral images, and reaction time was measured. Results Reaction times for positive and negative images were significantly longer than reaction times for neutral images. Reaction times for positive and negative images were not significantly different. Whereas older adults demonstrated significantly longer naming latencies overall than younger adults, the discrepancy in latency with age was far greater when naming emotional pictures. Conclusions Emotional arousal of pictures appears to impact naming latency in younger and older adults. We hypothesize that the increase in naming latency for emotional stimuli is the result of a necessary disengagement of attentional resources from the emotional images prior to completion of the naming task. We propose that this process may affect older adults disproportionately due to a decline in attentional resources as part of normal aging, combined with a greater attentional preference for emotional stimuli.

scholarly journals Auditory and Visual Integration for Emotion Recognition and Compensation for Degraded Signals are Preserved With Age

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 233121652110453
Author(s):  
Minke J. de Boer ◽  
Tim Jürgens ◽  
Deniz Başkent ◽  
Frans W. Cornelissen
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Elderly Population ◽  
Recognition Accuracy ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
The Other ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Visual Integration ◽  
Sensory Impairments

Since emotion recognition involves integration of the visual and auditory signals, it is likely that sensory impairments worsen emotion recognition. In emotion recognition, young adults can compensate for unimodal sensory degradations if the other modality is intact. However, most sensory impairments occur in the elderly population and it is unknown whether older adults are similarly capable of compensating for signal degradations. As a step towards studying potential effects of real sensory impairments, this study examined how degraded signals affect emotion recognition in older adults with normal hearing and vision. The degradations were designed to approximate some aspects of sensory impairments. Besides emotion recognition accuracy, we recorded eye movements to capture perceptual strategies for emotion recognition. Overall, older adults were as good as younger adults at integrating auditory and visual information and at compensating for degraded signals. However, accuracy was lower overall for older adults, indicating that aging leads to a general decrease in emotion recognition. In addition to decreased accuracy, older adults showed smaller adaptations of perceptual strategies in response to video degradations. Concluding, this study showed that emotion recognition declines with age, but that integration and compensation abilities are retained. In addition, we speculate that the reduced ability of older adults to adapt their perceptual strategies may be related to the increased time it takes them to direct their attention to scene aspects that are relatively far away from fixation.

scholarly journals Sustained Auditory Attentional Load Decreases Audiovisual Integration in Older and Younger Adults

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Yanna Ren ◽  
Yawei Hou ◽  
Jiayu Huang ◽  
Fanghong Li ◽  
Tao Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Race Model ◽  
Audiovisual Integration ◽  
Auditory Presentation ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Attentional Load ◽  
Audiovisual Stimuli ◽  
Effects Of Aging ◽  
Load Conditions

The modulation of attentional load on the perception of auditory and visual information has been widely reported; however, whether attentional load alters audiovisual integration (AVI) has seldom been investigated. Here, to explore the effect of sustained auditory attentional load on AVI and the effects of aging, nineteen older and 20 younger adults performed an AV discrimination task with a rapid serial auditory presentation task competing for attentional resources. The results showed that responses to audiovisual stimuli were significantly faster than those to auditory and visual stimuli ( AV > V ≥ A , all p < 0.001 ), and the younger adults were significantly faster than the older adults under all attentional load conditions (all p < 0.001 ). The analysis of the race model showed that AVI was decreased and delayed with the addition of auditory sustained attention ( no _ load > load _ 1 > load _ 2 > load _ 3 > load _ 4 ) for both older and younger adults. In addition, AVI was lower and more delayed in older adults than in younger adults in all attentional load conditions. These results suggested that auditory sustained attentional load decreased AVI and that AVI was reduced in older adults.

scholarly journals Hospital in Home COVID-19 Monitoring: A Novel Approach to Keeping a Watchful Eye on Older Adults

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 730-731
Author(s):  
Alissa Cooney ◽  
Monica Serra ◽  
Monica Lee ◽  
Kimberly Oakman ◽  
Laura Medlin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Hospital Discharge ◽  
Hospital Readmission ◽  
Monitoring Program ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Risk Of Death ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Effect Of Age ◽  
Overall Mortality

Abstract Older adults suffering from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) are at increased risk of death and hospitalization-related complications. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has forced adaptations in Telehealth, allowing COVID-19 patients to be managed at home. Traditionally, Hospital in Home (HIH) patients have better clinical outcomes and lower mortality compared to similar hospitalized patients. However, effectiveness of HIH for COVID-19 older adults remains unknown. This study examines the effect of age on rates of hospital readmission and overall mortality for patients enrolled in HIH after initial COVID-19 hospital discharge. A HIH COVID-19 monitoring program was developed to facilitate earlier hospital discharge and monitoring. Retrospective data between March 2020 and January 2021 were analyzed. Of the 402 subjects (age:26-99; mean:61.8), 13 (6.1%) subjects &lt;65 years old vs 19 (10%) subjects □65 years old were readmitted to the hospital at least once. Two (0.94%) subjects &lt;65 years old and 12 (6.3%) subjects □65 years old died. Older adults were 1.719 times more likely to be re-hospitalized (p=0.005) and 7.153 times more likely to die (p=0.017) compared to younger adults. Age remains a significant predictor of hospital readmission and mortality in subjects previously hospitalized for COVID-19 even when followed by monitoring programs like HIH. Further studies are needed to determine the best way to reduce hospital readmission and mortality rates for older adults after initial COVID-19 hospital discharge.

scholarly journals Age-related Changes in Memory for Object and Position-In-Context

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tammy Tran ◽  
Kaitlyn E. Tobin ◽  
Sophia H. Block ◽  
Vyash Puliyadi ◽  
Michela Gallagher ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Spatial Context ◽  
Complex Environments ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Age Related Changes

AbstractThere has been considerable focus on investigating age-related memory changes in cognitively healthy older adults, in the absence of neurodegenerative disorders. Previous studies have reported age-related domain-specific changes in older adults, showing increased difficulty encoding and processing object information but minimal to no impairment in processing spatial information compared to younger adults.However, few of these studies have examined age-related changes in the encoding of concurrently presented object and spatial stimuli, specifically the integration of both spatial and non-spatial (object) information. To more closely resemble real-life memory encoding and the integration of both spatial and non-spatial information, the current study developed a new experimental paradigm with novel environments that allowed for the placement of different objects in different positions within the environment. The current findings show that older adults have decreased performance in recognizing changes of the object position within the spatial context but no significant differences in recognizing changes in the identity of the object within the spatial context compared to younger adults. These findings suggest there may be potential age-related differences in the mechanisms underlying the representations of complex environments and furthermore, the integration of spatial and non-spatial information may be differentially processed relative to independent and isolated representations of object and spatial information.

The effect of balance training on audio–visual integration in older adults

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (0) ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
Niamh A. Merriman ◽  
Caroline Whyatt ◽  
Annalisa Setti ◽  
Nicholas Gillian ◽  
William Young ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Balance Control ◽  
Intervention Group ◽  
Balance Training ◽  
Berg Balance Scale ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Intervention Programme ◽  
Visual Integration ◽  
Increased Risk

Although the vestibular system is involved in maintaining balance and posture control, recent studies have provided evidence for a crucial role of other sensory modalities in this task. In older adults, reduced visual capacity, specifically impaired depth perception and contrast sensitivity, has been associated with an increased risk of falls. Moreover, using the auditory-flash illusion (Shams et al., 2000) we recently reported that auditory–visual perception is less efficient in fall-prone older adults than in their age-matched counterparts (Setti et al., 2011) and that susceptibility increases with ageing. The aim of this study was to investigate whether balance training is associated with changes in how efficiently auditory and visual information is integrated in older adults. We tested 58 older (65+ years) adults, half of whom took part in a balance training intervention programme over a series of 5 weeks and half of whom were controls. Pre- and post-training measures of balance control (e.g., Berg Balance Scale) and movement-based signals (e.g., displacement of centre of pressure) across groups suggested that the intervention was successful in improving overall balance control. Furthermore, we found that susceptibility to the auditory-flash illusion did not increase for the intervention group, but did increase in the control group over time. Furthermore, following balance training our data suggest that audio–visual integration becomes relatively more efficient in fall-prone than in non-fall prone older adults. Our findings suggest important links between balance control and multisensory interactions in the ageing brain.

Are Older Adults More Dependent on Visual Information in Regulating Self-Motion Than Younger Adults?

1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia G. Anderson ◽  
Bart Nienhuis ◽  
Theo Mulder ◽  
Wouter Hulstijn
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Self Motion

scholarly journals Age Differences in Discrete Emotional States During Risk Taking

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 557-557
Author(s):  
Nathaniel Young ◽  
Joseph Mikels
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Balloon Analogue Risk Task ◽  
Increased Risk

Abstract Emotions often guide risk-taking. For example, anger tends to lead to increased risk-taking. However, older and younger adults differ in their emotional experiences: older adults tend to report more positive emotions, fewer experiences of anger, and relatively similar or increased experiences of sadness relative to younger adults. As such, differences in emotional experience may manifest in the integral emotional responses of older and younger adults as they take risks. The current work examined the discrete integral emotional responses of older and younger adults as they completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). For the BART, participants completed 40 trials. Prior to each trial, participants reported how much anger, sadness, contentment, and excitement they felt. The results indicate that younger adults experienced more anger and less contentment than older adults in response to the BART. Importantly though, age differences also emerged in how discrete emotions predicted subsequent risk-taking.

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