Attention
How aging affects how we ignore visual locations and objects
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
While older adults struggle to ignore recently visited moving objects, they can ignore stationary objects just as well as younger adults when given enough time.
Key findings
In the moving display, both groups successfully ignored previously cued locations, but only younger adults showed a delay in responding to cued objects (averaging a small, significant slowdown). However, in the static display with a longer delay, both younger and older adults successfully ignored cued objects, slowing down by 16 and 12 milliseconds respectively. This suggests that older adults can still ignore previously visited objects when those objects remain still and there is sufficient time for inhibition to develop.
Methodology
Researchers conducted two experiments using visual search tasks to measure how young and older adults shift attention away from recently cued locations and objects. In Experiment 1, 35 younger and 35 older adults tracked four rotating boxes with a brief 698-millisecond delay before a target appeared. In Experiment 2, 24 younger and 24 older adults viewed static diagonal rectangles with a longer 1380-millisecond delay to see if static displays and extra time helped older adults ignore previously cued objects.
Limitations
The study cannot determine whether the preservation of object-based inhibition in older adults during Experiment 2 was caused by the objects being stationary or the or the significantly longer delay of 1380 milliseconds. Furthermore, the researchers did not track participants' eye movements, meaning they could not verify if participants maintained central fixation as instructed. Finally, the relatively small sample sizes of 35 and 24 participants per age group limit the generalizability of these findings to broader older populations.
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