Altered visual–spatial attention to task-irrelevant information is associated with falls risk in older adults

Nagamatsu, Lindsay S.; Munkacsy, Michelle; Liu-Ambrose, Teresa; Handy, Todd C.

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.10.002

Cited by 31 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 51 publications

(66 reference statements)

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“…They also suggested that visual dysfunction, is not a single sensory problem, but may be more complex than this and can contribute to falls through a number of different mechanisms. This is consistent with findings of Nagamutsu et al [57] who noted altered visual-spatial attention to taskirrelevant information was associated with heightened falls risk among older adults.…”

Section: Vision and Fallssupporting

confidence: 93%

Falls Among the Elderly and Vision: A Narrative Review

Marks

2014

MEDJ

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Falls among older people are widespread, and can be catastrophic in terms of injury magnitude, quality of life impact, and increased mortality risk. Among a multitude of factors influencing falls risk rates among older people are deficits in vision, and/or their effects on locomotion, balance, and functional ability. This review discusses the above topic, offers insight into what can be done in this realm based on the current body of literature. Sources drawn from leading peer review articles published over the last 30 years using key words: falls, vision, injury, fracture were retrieved and are analyzed and discussed. On this basis, the importance of falls and their prevention, and future clinical and research directives are highlighted. Expected to increase in prevalence falls cause much undue distress and high personal, as well as societal costs. The research literature on vision and falls, despite having major implications, remains limited at best, at present.

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Section: Vision and Fallssupporting

confidence: 93%

Falls Among the Elderly and Vision: A Narrative Review

Marks

2014

MEDJ

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“…Such measures are important, due to the potentially negative consequences of misjudging our environment, for example colliding with objects. This could be particularly consequential for older adults, because impaired lateral spatial processing has been associated with an increased risk of falls [ 14 , 16 ]. In contrast to lab-based measures, these ‘real-world’ tasks have, by-and-large, identified systematic behavioural errors and preferences towards the right side of space.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Right-lateralised lane keeping in young and older British drivers

et al. 2018

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Young adults demonstrate a small, but consistent, asymmetry of spatial attention favouring the left side of space (“pseudoneglect”) in laboratory-based tests of perception. Conversely, in more naturalistic environments, behavioural errors towards the right side of space are often observed. In the older population, spatial attention asymmetries are generally diminished, or even reversed to favour the right side of space, but much of this evidence has been gained from lab-based and/or psychophysical testing. In this study we assessed whether spatial biases can be elicited during a simulated driving task, and secondly whether these biases also shift with age, in line with standard lab-based measures. Data from 77 right-handed adults with full UK driving licences (i.e. prior experience of left-lane driving) were analysed: 38 young (mean age = 21.53) and 39 older adults (mean age = 70.38). Each participant undertook 3 tests of visuospatial attention: the landmark task, line bisection task, and a simulated lane-keeping task. We found leftward biases in young adults for the landmark and line bisection tasks, indicative of pseudoneglect, and a mean lane position towards the right of centre. In young adults the leftward landmark task biases were negatively correlated with rightward lane-keeping biases, hinting that a common property of the spatial attention networks may have influenced both tasks. As predicted, older adults showed no group-level spatial asymmetry on the landmark nor the line bisection task, but they maintained a mean rightward lane position, similar to young adults. The 3 tasks were not inter-correlated in the older group. These results suggest that spatial biases in older adults may be elicited more effectively in experiments involving complex behaviour rather than abstract, lab-based measures. More broadly, these results confirm that lateral biases of spatial attention are linked to driving behaviour, and this could prove informative in the development of future vehicle safety and driving technology.

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“…There is also evidence that males and females may produce differential patterns of pseudoneglect over aging, with older females exhibiting more consistent left biases, whilst older males may exhibit a drift into rightward bias with age (Varnava & Halligan, 2007;Chen, Goedert, Murray, Kelly, Ahmeti, Barrett, 2011). Meanwhile there is evidence for reduced lateral bias in older participants in lateralised visual detection tasks (Learmonth, Thut, Benwell & Harvey, 2015;Nagamatsu, Carolan, Liu-Ambrose & Handy, 2011;Nagamatsu, Munkacsy, Liu-Ambrose & Handy, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adult developmental trajectories of pseudoneglect in the tactile, visual and auditory modalities and the influence of starting position and stimulus length

Brooks

Darling

Malvaso

et al. 2016

Brain and Cognition

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Pseudoneglect is a tendency to pay more attention to the left side of space, typically demonstrated on tasks like visuo-spatial line bisection, tactile rod bisection and the mental representation of numbers. The developmental trajectory of this bias on these three tasks is not fully understood. In the current study younger participants aged between 18 and 40 years of age and older participants aged between 55 and 90 years conducted three spatial tasks: 1) visuospatial line bisection -participants were asked to bisect visually presented lines of different lengths at the perceived midpoint; 2) touch-driven tactile rod bisection in the absence of vision -participants were asked to feel the length of a wooden rod with their index finger and bisect the rod at the perceived centre; and 3) mental number line bisection in the absence of vision -participants were asked to listen to a pair of numbers and respond with the numerical midpoint between the pair. The results showed that both younger and older participants demonstrated pseudoneglect (leftward biases) in the visual, tactile and mental number line tasks and that the magnitude of pseudoneglect for each group was influenced by physical or mentally represented starting side (start left versus start right) and stimulus length. We provide an exploration of pseudoneglect in younger and older adults in different tasks that vary in the degree to which mental representations are accessed and argue that pseudoneglect is a result of a right hemisphere attentional orienting process that is retained throughout adulthood. Our results indicate that, contrary to some current models of cognitive ageing, asymmetrical patterns of hemispheric activity may occur in older age.

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Altered visual–spatial attention to task-irrelevant information is associated with falls risk in older adults

Cited by 31 publications

References 51 publications

Falls Among the Elderly and Vision: A Narrative Review

Falls Among the Elderly and Vision: A Narrative Review

Right-lateralised lane keeping in young and older British drivers

Adult developmental trajectories of pseudoneglect in the tactile, visual and auditory modalities and the influence of starting position and stimulus length

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