The effect of ageing on crossmodal selective attention and visuotactile spatial interactions

Ellen Poliakoff, University of Manchester

Abstract
We investigated whether ageing affects crossmodal selective attention (the ability to focus on a relevant sensory modality and ignore an irrelevant modality) and the spatial constraints on such selective processing. Three groups of 24 participants were tested: Young (19-25 years), Young-Old (65-72 years) and Old-Old (76-92 years). The participants had to judge the elevation of vibrotactile targets (upper/index finger & lower/thumb), presented randomly to either hand while ignoring concurrent visual distractors. In a second task, the role of the target and distractor modalities was reversed. When attending to touch, the addition of visual distractors had a significantly larger effect on error rates in both of the older groups compared to the Young group. Performance was impaired when the target and distractor were presented at incongruent as compared to congruent elevations in both tasks for all age groups. In certain conditions, participants in the two younger age groups found it harder to attend selectively to one modality, when target and distractor stimuli came from the same side rather than from different sides. However, no significant spatial modulation was found in the Old-Old group. This suggests that ageing compromises spatial aspects of crossmodal selective attention.

Not available

Back to Abstract