Aging effects on extrapersonal (far-space) attention: cancellation and line bisection performance from 179 healthy adults

Abstract

Assessment of cognitive impairments is a vital part of clinical practise. Cancellation (visual search) and line bisection are commonly used tasks to assess visuospatial attention. Despite the fact visuospatial attention is engaged in both near (within reach) and far-space (out of reach), most studies have been conducted in near-space alone. Moreover, despite their use in clinical practice, it is unclear whether cancellation and bisection tasks are related. Here, we investigated the impact of aging on cancellation and line bisection performance in far-space in a large healthy sample. We provide age-related norms for assessing visuospatial attention in far-space calculated from a sample of 179 healthy adults, between the ages of 18-94 (mean age = 49.29). Cancellation and bisection were presented on a large television screen in far-space and completed using a wireless remote. Aging was accompanied by longer task duration for both tasks, slower search speed, and poorer quality of search. However, there was no significant effect of aging on line bisection error. There was a significant correlation between the two tasks in that longer task duration in line bisection was associated with slower search speed and poorer quality of search. Overall, participants presented a leftward bias during cancellation and line bisection akin to pseudo-neglect. Moreover, we also found that irrespective of age, search speed was faster in males than females. We offer novel evidence that performance on cancellation and line bisection tasks are related to one another in far-space, but are also sensitive to age-related decline, and even sex differences.