Cognitive and Attentional Changes withAge: Evidence from Attentional Blink Deficits

Abstract

The attentional blink (AB) is a marked deficit in detecting a second target for up to 600 ms within a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). The phenomenon of the AB has typically been investigated using college students between 18 and 25 years of age. However, the AB has not been closely studied within a senior population. Past studies have found age-related attentional deficits using cued location, visual conjunction search, and divided-attention tasks, all spatial measures of attention; however, the physiological basis of these deficits is not fully understood. The role of cognitive slowing and reduced attentional resources was examined using the AB paradigm--a temporal measure of attention. Experiment 1 found an age-related deficit independent of lag for the single-task condition and a larger more prolonged deficit for dual-task conditions. Experiment 2, using similar methods to Experiment 1, incorporated a more rigorous cognitive screen. A similar deficit was found for the dual-task condition. However, single-task trials appeared to involuntarily capture attentional resources for the older population. Comparisons revealed a significant difference in the magnitude and the time course of the AB with age. Results are discussed in the context of cognitive slowing and reduced attentional resources.

Dynamic attentional modulation of vision across space and time after right hemisphere stroke and in ageing

“…We hypothesized that if the level of attention required in the task described in Experiment 1 was increased, older participants might begin to show a failure to discriminate peripheral stimuli. The paradigm developed in the first study lends itself well to examining whether any impairments older people have in reporting peripheral events (Owsley et al., 1995) interact with the lengthened attentional blink described by other authors in elderly individuals (e.g., Maciokas and Crognale, 2003; Georgiou-Karistianis et al., 2007). …”

“…Crucially, these studies have not modulated the amount of attention required in the central task in order to examine how this impacts on deployment of attention to peripheral items. Some investigations have also reported that older participants might suffer from an AB that is longer and of greater magnitude (e.g., Georgiou-Karistianis et al., 2007; Maciokas and Crognale, 2003), but no studies have examined perception across the visual field in these paradigms. In our second experiment, we used our paradigm to probe deployment of attention over space and time within healthy ageing when participants perform a demanding task at fixation.…”

Effect of Meditation on Cognitive Functions in Context of Aging and Neurodegenerative Diseases

“…The results of meditating group were significantly better compared to the age-matched control group. Furthermore, they performed better also in comparison with the control group consisting of young people, even though several studies have proved that attention ability decreases with age (Maciokas and Crognale, 2003; Georgiou-Karistianis et al, 2007). …”

The effects of age and set size on the fast extraction of egocentric distance

“…On the other hand, if distance does increase processing load during consolidation, as considered above, age would be expected to have an impact over and above its impact on directional localization. Older adults have shown greater and more sustained attentional blink (e.g., Lahar, Isaak, & McArthur, 2001; Maciokas & Crognale, 2003), a phenomenon of rapid serial visual presentation tasks that is commonly attributed to consolidation failure (e.g., Chun & Potter, 1995; Ptito, Arnell, Jolicœur, & MacLeod, 2008; Vogel & Luck, 2002). Thus, if distance is a feature that increases processing load, the cost of encoding multiple distal objects into memory could reasonably be expected to compound with age.…”