Roudaia Eugenie, Faubert Jocelyn
École d'optométrie, Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada.
J Vis. 2017 Sep 1;17(11):1. doi: 10.1167/17.11.1.
The current study examined the role of temporal resolution of attention in the decline in multiple object tracking abilities with healthy aging. The temporal resolution of attention is known to limit attentional tracking of one and multiple targets (Holcombe & Chen, 2013). Here, we examined whether aging is associated with a lower temporal resolution of attention when tracking one target, the efficiency of splitting attention across multiple targets, or both. Stimuli comprised three concentric rings containing five or 10 equally spaced dots. While maintaining central fixation, younger and older participants tracked a target dot on one, two, or three rings while the rings rotated around fixation in random directions for 5 s. Rotational speed was varied to estimate speed or temporal frequency thresholds in six conditions. Results showed that younger and older participants had similar temporal frequency thresholds for tracking one target, but the addition of one and two more targets reduced thresholds more in the older group compared to the younger group. Gender also affected performance, with men having higher temporal frequency thresholds than women, independently of the number of targets. These findings indicate that the temporal resolution of attention for a single target depends on gender but is not affected by aging, whereas aging specifically affects the efficiency of dividing attention across multiple targets.
当前的研究考察了注意力的时间分辨率在健康衰老过程中多目标追踪能力下降方面所起的作用。已知注意力的时间分辨率会限制对单个目标和多个目标的注意力追踪（霍尔科姆和陈，2013年）。在此，我们研究了衰老是否与追踪单个目标时注意力的较低时间分辨率、跨多个目标分配注意力的效率或两者都有关。刺激物由三个同心圆组成，每个圆包含五个或十个等距分布的点。在保持中央注视的同时，年轻和年长的参与者在一个、两个或三个环上追踪一个目标点，同时这些环围绕注视点沿随机方向旋转5秒。在六种条件下改变旋转速度以估计速度或时间频率阈值。结果表明，年轻和年长的参与者在追踪单个目标时具有相似的时间频率阈值，但与年轻组相比，年长组中增加一个和两个目标时阈值降低得更多。性别也会影响表现，男性的时间频率阈值高于女性，且与目标数量无关。这些发现表明，对单个目标的注意力时间分辨率取决于性别，但不受衰老影响，而衰老特别影响跨多个目标分配注意力的效率。
