Billino Jutta, Bremmer Frank, Gegenfurtner Karl R
Department of Experimental Psychology, Justus Liebig University, Otto Behaghel Str. 10F, D-35394 Giessen, Germany.
Vision Res. 2008 May;48(10):1254-61. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2008.02.014. Epub 2008 Apr 8.
While the percentage of older people in our society is steadily increasing, knowledge about perceptual changes during healthy aging is still limited. We investigated age effects on visual motion perception in order to differentiate between general decline and specific vulnerabilities. A total of 119 subjects ranging in age from 20 to 82 years participated in our study. Perceptual thresholds for different types of motion information, including translational motion, expanding radial flow, and biological motion, were determined. Results revealed a substantial increase of thresholds for translational motion with age. Biological motion perception was only moderately affected by age. For both motion types, threshold elevation seemed to develop gradually with age. In contrast, we found stable radial flow analysis across lifespan. There was no evidence that age effects were dependent on gender. Results demonstrate that visual capabilities are not equally prone to age-related decline. Surprisingly, higher motion complexity might not be necessarily associated with more pronounced perceptual constraints. We suggest that differential age effects on the perception of specific motion types might indicate that specialized neuronal processing mechanisms differ in their vulnerability to physiological changes during aging.
尽管我们社会中老年人的比例在稳步上升，但关于健康衰老过程中感知变化的知识仍然有限。我们研究了年龄对视觉运动感知的影响，以便区分普遍衰退和特定易损性。共有119名年龄在20岁至82岁之间的受试者参与了我们的研究。确定了不同类型运动信息的感知阈值，包括平移运动、扩展径向流和生物运动。结果显示，平移运动的阈值随年龄大幅增加。生物运动感知仅受到年龄的中度影响。对于这两种运动类型，阈值升高似乎随着年龄逐渐发展。相比之下，我们发现整个生命周期内径向流分析是稳定的。没有证据表明年龄效应取决于性别。结果表明，视觉能力对与年龄相关的衰退并非同样敏感。令人惊讶的是，更高的运动复杂性不一定与更明显的感知限制相关。我们认为，对特定运动类型感知的不同年龄效应可能表明，专门的神经元处理机制在衰老过程中对生理变化的易损性不同。
