scholarly journals Exogenous Bimodal Cues Attenuate Age-Related Audiovisual Integration

i-Perception ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 204166952110207
Author(s):  
Yanna Ren ◽  
Ying Zhang ◽  
Yawei Hou ◽  
Junyuan Li ◽  
Junhao Bi ◽  
...  

Previous studies have demonstrated that exogenous attention decreases audiovisual integration (AVI); however, whether the AVI is different when exogenous attention is elicited by bimodal and unimodal cues and its aging effect remain unclear. To clarify this matter, 20 older adults and 20 younger adults were recruited to conduct an auditory/visual discrimination task following bimodal audiovisual cues or unimodal auditory/visual cues. The results showed that the response to all stimulus types was faster in younger adults compared with older adults, and the response was faster when responding to audiovisual stimuli compared with auditory or visual stimuli. Analysis using the race model revealed that the AVI was lower in the exogenous-cue conditions compared with the no-cue condition for both older and younger adults. The AVI was observed in all exogenous-cue conditions for the younger adults (visual cue > auditory cue > audiovisual cue); however, for older adults, the AVI was only found in the visual-cue condition. In addition, the AVI was lower in older adults compared to younger adults under no- and visual-cue conditions. These results suggested that exogenous attention decreased the AVI, and the AVI was lower in exogenous attention elicited by bimodal-cue than by unimodal-cue conditions. In addition, the AVI was reduced for older adults compared with younger adults under exogenous attention.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanna Ren ◽  
Hannan Li ◽  
Yan Li ◽  
Tao Wang ◽  
Weiping Yang

Previous studies confirmed that the cognitive resources are limited for each person, and perceptual load affects the detection of stimulus greatly; however, how the visual perceptual load influences audiovisual integration (AVI) is still unclear. Here, 20 older and 20 younger adults were recruited to perform an auditory/visual discrimination task under various visual perceptual-load conditions. The analysis for the response times revealed a significantly faster response to the audiovisual stimulus than to the visual stimulus or auditory stimulus (all p < 0.001), and a significantly slower response by the older adults than by the younger adults to all targets (all p ≤ 0.024). The race-model analysis revealed a higher AV facilitation effect for older (12.54%) than for younger (7.08%) adults under low visual perceptual-load conditions; however, no obvious difference was found between younger (2.92%) and older (3.06%) adults under medium visual perceptual-load conditions. Only the AV depression effect was found for both younger and older adults under high visual perceptual-load conditions. Additionally, the peak latencies of AVI were significantly delayed in older adults under all visual perceptual-load conditions. These results suggested that visual perceptual load decreased AVI (i.e., depression effects), and the AVI effect was increased but delayed for older adults.


Perception ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 566-585 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Ramkhalawansingh ◽  
Behrang Keshavarz ◽  
Bruce Haycock ◽  
Saba Shahab ◽  
Jennifer L. Campos

Previous psychophysical research has examined how younger adults and non-human primates integrate visual and vestibular cues to perceive self-motion. However, there is much to be learned about how multisensory self-motion perception changes with age, and how these changes affect performance on everyday tasks involving self-motion. Evidence suggests that older adults display heightened multisensory integration compared with younger adults; however, few previous studies have examined this for visual–vestibular integration. To explore age differences in the way that visual and vestibular cues contribute to self-motion perception, we had younger and older participants complete a basic driving task containing visual and vestibular cues. We compared their performance against a previously established control group that experienced visual cues alone. Performance measures included speed, speed variability, and lateral position. Vestibular inputs resulted in more precise speed control among older adults, but not younger adults, when traversing curves. Older adults demonstrated more variability in lateral position when vestibular inputs were available versus when they were absent. These observations align with previous evidence of age-related differences in multisensory integration and demonstrate that they may extend to visual–vestibular integration. These findings may have implications for vehicle and simulator design when considering older users.


i-Perception ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 204166952097841
Author(s):  
Yanna Ren ◽  
Zhihan Xu ◽  
Sa Lu ◽  
Tao Wang ◽  
Weiping Yang

Age-related audio-visual integration (AVI) has been investigated extensively; however, AVI ability is either enhanced or reduced with ageing, and this matter is still controversial because of the lack of systematic investigations. To remove possible variates, 26 older adults and 26 younger adults were recruited to conduct meaningless and semantic audio-visual discrimination tasks to assess the ageing effect of AVI systematically. The results for the mean response times showed a significantly faster response to the audio-visual (AV) target than that to the auditory (A) or visual (V) target and a significantly faster response to all targets by the younger adults than that by the older adults (A, V, and AV) in all conditions. In addition, a further comparison of the differences between the probability of audio-visual cumulative distributive functions (CDFs) and race model CDFs showed delayed AVI effects and a longer time window for AVI in older adults than that in younger adults in all conditions. The AVI effect was lower in older adults than that in younger adults during simple meaningless image discrimination (63.0 ms vs. 108.8 ms), but the findings were inverse during semantic image discrimination (310.3 ms vs. 127.2 ms). In addition, there was no significant difference between older and younger adults during semantic character discrimination (98.1 ms vs. 117.2 ms). These results suggested that AVI ability was impaired in older adults, but a compensatory mechanism was established for processing sematic audio-visual stimuli.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Yanna Ren ◽  
Yawei Hou ◽  
Jiayu Huang ◽  
Fanghong Li ◽  
Tao Wang ◽  
...  

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.


2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (0) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Claudia Freigang ◽  
Marc Stoehr ◽  
Kristina Schmiedchen ◽  
Jan Bennemann ◽  
Rudolf Rübsamen

Localization accuracy of stationary acoustic objects is reduced as people grow older. While it is known that this reduction can be caused by many age-related declines in the peripheral sensory system, at central cortical levels as well as in cognitive processes, it is not known how much localization performance is influenced by concurrent congruent and/or incongruent spatial information from a different sensory system, e.g., vision. In the present study we examined localization accuracy of young and old adults to acoustic stimuli that were presented simultaneously to a visual stimulus that was either spatially congruent or spatially disparate (by ±5°/±10°/±15°) in acoustic free field. The acoustic reference position was presented at frontal (9°), para-frontal (30°), and lateral (64°) positions. To infer how strongly the visual cue interacted with the auditory stimulus a unification task was examined. Here, acoustic and visual stimulus combinations were the same as in the localization task. Participants were instructed to indicate whenever both visual and acoustic information matched in terms of their spatial position. Localization accuracy was not influenced by the visual cue in young adults, but the influence of the visual distractor was strong in old adults, i.e., visual bias was strong. These observations were supported by the unification task where old adults had increased perception of congruent audio–visual directions at all reference positions and even at very large disparities (e.g., ±15°). Conclusively, concurrent information from different sensory systems highly influences auditory localization accuracy in older adults, supporting the notion that multisensory integration is enhanced in older adults.


2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (5) ◽  
pp. 1037-1046 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jade Eloise Norris ◽  
Sarah Clayton ◽  
Camilla Gilmore ◽  
Matthew Inglis ◽  
Julie Castronovo

Recent studies have highlighted the influence of visual cues such as dot size and cumulative surface area on the measurement of the approximate number system (ANS). Previous studies assessing ANS acuity in ageing have all applied stimuli generated by the Panamath protocol, which does not control nor measure the influence of convex hull. Crucially, convex hull has recently been identified as an influential visual cue present in dot arrays, with its impact on older adults’ ANS acuity yet to be investigated. The current study therefore investigated the manipulation of convex hull by the Panamath protocol, and its effect on the measurement of ANS acuity in younger and older participants. First, analyses of the stimuli generated by Panamath revealed a confound between numerosity ratio and convex hull ratio. Second, although older adults were somewhat less accurate than younger adults on convex hull incongruent trials, ANS acuity was broadly similar between the groups. These findings have implications for the valid measurement of ANS acuity across all ages, and suggest that the Panamath protocol produces stimuli that do not adequately control for the influence of convex hull on numerosity discrimination.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debbie Marianne Yee ◽  
Sarah L Adams ◽  
Asad Beck ◽  
Todd Samuel Braver

Motivational incentives play an influential role in value-based decision-making and cognitive control. A compelling hypothesis in the literature suggests that the brain integrates the motivational value of diverse incentives (e.g., motivational integration) into a common currency value signal that influences decision-making and behavior. To investigate whether motivational integration processes change during healthy aging, we tested older (N=44) and younger (N=54) adults in an innovative incentive integration task paradigm that establishes dissociable and additive effects of liquid (e.g., juice, neutral, saltwater) and monetary incentives on cognitive task performance. The results reveal that motivational incentives improve cognitive task performance in both older and younger adults, providing novel evidence demonstrating that age-related cognitive control deficits can be ameliorated with sufficient incentive motivation. Additional analyses revealed clear age-related differences in motivational integration. Younger adult task performance was modulated by both monetary and liquid incentives, whereas monetary reward effects were more gradual in older adults and more strongly impacted by trial-by-trial performance feedback. A surprising discovery was that older adults shifted attention from liquid valence toward monetary reward throughout task performance, but younger adults shifted attention from monetary reward toward integrating both monetary reward and liquid valence by the end of the task, suggesting differential strategic utilization of incentives. Together these data suggest that older adults may have impairments in incentive integration, and employ different motivational strategies to improve cognitive task performance. The findings suggest potential candidate neural mechanisms that may serve as the locus of age-related change, providing targets for future cognitive neuroscience investigations.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samina Rahman ◽  
Victoria Kordovski ◽  
Savanna Tierney ◽  
Steven Paul Woods

Objective: Online banking is becoming increasingly common among older adults, whomay experience difficulties effectively navigating this instrumental technology. Thisstudy examined age effects on a performance-based Internet banking task and itsassociation with neurocognitive ability and functional capacity in older and youngeradults. Method: Thirty-five older adults and 50 younger adults completed anexperimenter-controlled online banking measure in which they independentlyperformed a series of naturalistic financial tasks (e.g., account transfers, bill paying).Participants also completed a standardized battery of neuropsychological tests andmeasures of functional capacity. Results: Older adults were markedly slower and lessaccurate in completing the Internet-based banking task, which was not confounded byother demographic, mood, or computer use factors. Higher scores on measures ofneurocognition and financial functional capacity were both strongly associated withhigher Internet-based banking task accuracy scores and quicker completion times inthe older, but not the younger adults. Conclusions: Findings suggest that older adultsexperience difficultly quickly and accurately navigating online banking platforms, whichmay be partly related to age-related declines in neurocognitive functions and basicfinancial capacity. Future studies might examine whether neurocognitive approaches toremediation and compensation can be used to improve online banking capacity inolder adults.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 653-653
Author(s):  
Lizbeth Benson ◽  
Anthony Ong

Abstract Intensive measurements of individuals’ experiences allow for identifying patterns of functioning that may be markers of resilience, and whether such patterns differ across the life span. Using 8 daily diary reports collected in the second burst of the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE, n=848, age 34-84; 55%female), we examined whether positive emodiversity (Shannon’s entropy) attenuated the association between cumulative stressor exposure and depressive symptoms, and age-related differences therein. Results indicated age moderated the extent to which positive emodiversity attenuated the association between stress and depressive symptoms (b=0.11, p &lt; .05). The attenuated association was strongest for younger adults with higher positive emodiversity, compared to those with lower positive emodiversity. For older adults, the association between stress and depressive symptoms was relatively similar regardless of their positive emodiversity. Implications pertain to for whom and in what contexts specific types of dynamic emotion experiences may promote optimal functioning and resilience.


2015 ◽  
Vol 113 (7) ◽  
pp. 2127-2136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chia-Cheng Lin ◽  
Susan L. Whitney ◽  
Patrick J. Loughlin ◽  
Joseph M. Furman ◽  
Mark S. Redfern ◽  
...  

Vibrotactile feedback (VTF) has been shown to improve balance performance in healthy people and people with vestibular disorders in a single-task experimental condition. It is unclear how age-related changes in balance affect the ability to use VTF and if there are different attentional requirements for old and young adults when using VTF. Twenty younger and 20 older subjects participated in this two-visit study to examine the effect of age, VTF, sensory condition, cognitive task, duration of time, and visit on postural and cognitive performance. Postural performance outcome measures included root mean square of center of pressure (COP) and trunk tilt, and cognitive performance was assessed using the reaction time (RT) from an auditory choice RT task. The results showed that compared with younger adults, older adults had an increase in COP in fixed platform conditions when using VTF, although they were able to reduce COP during sway-referenced platform conditions. Older adults also did not benefit fully from using VTF in their first session. The RTs for the secondary cognitive tasks increased significantly while using the VTF in both younger and older adults. Older adults had a larger increase compared with younger adults, suggesting that greater attentional demands were required in older adults when using VTF information. Future training protocols for VTF should take into consideration the effect of aging.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document