Timing of reflexive visuospatial orienting in young, young-old, and old-old adults

• Published in: Attention, perception & psychophysics Vol. 73; no. 5; pp. 1546 - 1561
• Main Authors: Langley, Linda K., Friesen, Chris Kelland, Saville, Alyson L., Ciernia, Annie T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer-Verlag 01.07.2011; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Activity levels. Psychomotricity; Adolescent; Adult; Adult. Elderly; Age differences; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Aging (Individuals); Aging - psychology; Attention; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Biomedical research; Cognition & reasoning; Cognitive Psychology; Cues; Developmental psychology; Eye Movements; Feedback (Response); Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Inhibition; Inhibition, Psychological; Internet; Male; Middle Aged; Motor Reactions; Older people; Orientation; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Perception; Prompting; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reaction Time; Reflex; Saccades; Stimuli; Vigilance. Attention. Sleep; Vision; Visual Fields; Volition; Young Adult; Young Adults; Aging; Young-old and old-old; Spatial orienting; Attentional control settings; Attention; Human; Senescence; Cognition; Space perception; Experimental study; Vision; Young adult; Perception; Timing; Visual attention; Elderly; Cognitive control
• ISSN: 1943-3921; 1943-393X
• DOI: 10.3758/s13414-011-0108-8

This study examined adult age differences in reflexive orienting to two types of uninformative spatial cues: central arrows and peripheral onsets. In two experiments using a Posner cuing task, young adults (ages 18–28 years), young-old adults (60–74 years), and old-old adults (75–92 years) responded to targets that were preceded 100–1,000 ms earlier by a central arrow or a peripheral abrupt onset. In Experiment 1 , the cue remained present upon target onset. Facilitation effects at short cue–target stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) were prolonged in duration for the two older groups relative to the young adults. At longer cue–target SOAs, inhibition of return (IOR) that was initiated by peripheral onset cues was observed in the performance of young adults but not in that of the two older groups. In Experiment 2 , the cue was presented briefly and removed prior to target onset. The change in cue duration minimized age differences (particularly for young-old adults) in facilitation effects and led to IOR for all three age groups. The findings are consistent with the idea that attentional control settings change with age, with higher settings for older adults leading to delayed disengagement from spatial cues.