Department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands.
Psychol Aging. 2011 Jun;26(2):415-26. doi: 10.1037/a0021507.
Age-related deficits in selective attention have often been demonstrated in the visual modality and, to a lesser extent, in the auditory modality. In contrast, a mounting body of evidence has suggested that cross-modal selective attention is intact in aging, especially in visual tasks that require ignoring the auditory modality. Our goal in this study was to investigate age-related differences in the ability to ignore cross-modal auditory and visual distraction and to assess the role of cognitive control demands thereby. In a set of two experiments, 30 young (mean age = 23.3 years) and 30 older adults (mean age = 67.7 years) performed a visual and an auditory n-back task (0 ≤ n ≤ 2), with and without cross-modal distraction. The results show an asymmetry in cross-modal distraction as a function of sensory modality and age: Whereas auditory distraction did not disrupt performance on the visual task in either age group, visual distraction disrupted performance on the auditory task in both age groups. Most important, however, visual distraction was disproportionately larger in older adults. These results suggest that age-related distraction is modality dependent, such that suppression of cross-modal auditory distraction is preserved and suppression of cross-modal visual distraction is impaired in aging.
年龄相关的选择性注意缺陷在视觉模态中经常被证明，在听觉模态中则较少被证明。相比之下，越来越多的证据表明，跨模态选择性注意在衰老过程中是完整的，特别是在需要忽略听觉模态的视觉任务中。我们在这项研究中的目标是调查在忽略跨模态听觉和视觉干扰的能力方面的年龄差异，并评估认知控制需求的作用。在两组实验中，30 名年轻人（平均年龄=23.3 岁）和 30 名老年人（平均年龄=67.7 岁）分别进行了视觉和听觉 n-回任务（0≤n≤2），并伴有和不伴有跨模态干扰。结果表明，跨模态干扰存在着与感觉模态和年龄相关的不对称性：尽管听觉干扰在两个年龄组的视觉任务中都没有干扰表现，但视觉干扰在两个年龄组的听觉任务中都干扰了表现。然而，最重要的是，老年人的视觉干扰不成比例地更大。这些结果表明，年龄相关的干扰是模态依赖的，即抑制跨模态听觉干扰得到保留，而抑制跨模态视觉干扰在衰老过程中受损。
