Centre for Policy on Ageing



An event-related potential evaluation of involuntary attentional shifts in young and older adults
Author(s)	Helen Gaeta, David Friedman, Walter Ritter
Journal title	Psychology and Aging, vol 16, no 1, March 2001
Pages	pp 55-68
Keywords	Cognitive processes ; Learning capacity ; Age groups [elderly] ; Young adults [20-25] ; Cross sectional surveys ; United States of America.
Annotation	Involuntary shifts in attention to irrelevant stimuli were studied in old and young volunteers during a dichotic listening task. Event-related potentials and behavioural measures were recorded. Volunteers heard pairs of tones presented with 2 different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). To-be-ignored tones were presented to the left ear, followed by to-be-attended tones to the right ear. Behavioural performance was impaired at the short SOA when to-be-ignored large deviants preceded to-be-attended targets, but more so for older volunteers. Large deviants also elicited the mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a for both age groups. The more impaired behavioural performance observed for older people was due to greater sensitivity to output from the MMN system by a frontal lobe system responsible for the maintenance of attentional focus. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-020111205 A
Classmark	DA: DE: BB: SD6: 3KB: 7T
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.