Compliance instead of flexibility? On age-related differences in cognitive control during visual search

Publication date: Available online 11 February 2017
Source:Neurobiology of Aging
Author(s): Christine Mertes, Edmund Wascher, Daniel Schneider
The effect of healthy aging on cognitive control of irrelevant visual information was investigated by using event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants performed a spatial cuing task where an irrelevant color cue that was either contingent (color search) or non-contingent (shape search) on the attentional set was presented prior to a target with different stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs). In the contingent condition, attentional capture appeared independent of age and persisted over the SOAs but was markedly pronounced for elderly people. Accordingly, ERP analyses revealed that both older and younger adults initially selected the irrelevant cue when it was contingent on the attentional set and transferred spatial cue information into working memory. However, only younger adults revealed inhibitory mechanisms to compensate for attentional capture. It is proposed that this age-related lack of reactive inhibition leads to stickiness in visual processing whenever information is contingent on the attentional set, unveiling older adults' "Achilles' heel" in cognitive control.



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