Mott Katherine K, Alperin Brittany R, Fox Anne M, Holcomb Phillip J, Daffner Kirk R
Center for Brain/Mind Medicine, Division of Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, Department of Neurology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 221 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Department of Psychology, Tufts University, 490 Boston Avenue, Medford, MA 02155, USA.
Neuropsychologia. 2015 Apr;70:30-42. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.02.003. Epub 2015 Feb 3.
This study examined the role of executive capacity (EC) and aging in multidimensional feature selection. ERPs were recorded from healthy young and old adults of either high or average EC based on neuropsychological testing. Participants completed a color selective attention task in which they responded to target letter-forms in a specified color (attend condition) while ignoring letter-forms in a different color (ignore condition). Two selection negativity (SN) components were computed: the SN(Color) (attend-ignore), indexing early color selection, and the SN(Letter) (targets-standards), indexing early letter-form selection. High EC subjects exhibited self-terminating feature selection; the processing of one feature type was reduced if information from the other feature type suggested the stimulus did not contain the task-relevant feature. In contrast, average EC subjects exhaustively selected all features of a stimulus. The self-terminating approach was associated with better task accuracy. Higher EC was also linked to stronger early selection of target letter-forms, but did not modulate the seemingly less demanding task of color selection. Mechanisms utilized for multidimensional feature selection appear to be consistent across the lifespan, although there was age-related slowing of processing speed for early selection of letter features. We conclude that EC is a critical determinant of how multidimensional feature processing is carried out.
本研究考察了执行能力（EC）和衰老在多维特征选择中的作用。基于神经心理学测试，从高EC或平均EC的健康年轻人和老年人中记录了事件相关电位（ERP）。参与者完成了一项颜色选择性注意任务，在该任务中，他们对指定颜色的目标字母形状做出反应（注意条件），同时忽略不同颜色的字母形状（忽略条件）。计算了两个选择负波（SN）成分：SN（颜色）（注意-忽略），指示早期颜色选择；以及SN（字母）（目标-标准），指示早期字母形状选择。高EC受试者表现出自我终止的特征选择；如果来自另一种特征类型的信息表明刺激不包含与任务相关的特征，则一种特征类型的处理会减少。相比之下，平均EC受试者会详尽地选择刺激的所有特征。自我终止方法与更好的任务准确性相关。较高的EC还与更强的目标字母形状早期选择相关，但并未调节看似要求较低的颜色选择任务。尽管在字母特征的早期选择中存在与年龄相关的处理速度减慢，但用于多维特征选择的机制在整个生命周期中似乎是一致的。我们得出结论，EC是多维特征处理方式的关键决定因素。
