Department of Industrial Engineering, Hanyang University, 222 Wangsimni-ro, Seongdong-gu, Seoul 04763, Korea.
Department of Arts and Technology, Hanyang University, 222 Wangsimni-ro, Seongdong-gu, Seoul 04763, Korea.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2018 Apr 11;15(4):718. doi: 10.3390/ijerph15040718.
Older adults are known to have lesser cognitive control capability and greater susceptibility to distraction than young adults. Previous studies have reported age-related problems in selective attention and inhibitory control, yielding mixed results depending on modality and context in which stimuli and tasks were presented. The purpose of the study was to empirically demonstrate a modality-specific loss of inhibitory control in processing audio-visual information with ageing. A group of 30 young adults (mean age = 25.23, Standar Desviation (SD) = 1.86) and 22 older adults (mean age = 55.91, SD = 4.92) performed the audio-visual contour identification task (AV-CIT). We compared performance of visual/auditory identification (Uni-V, Uni-A) with that of visual/auditory identification in the presence of distraction in counterpart modality (Multi-V, Multi-A). The findings showed a modality-specific effect on inhibitory control. Uni-V performance was significantly better than Multi-V, indicating that auditory distraction significantly hampered visual target identification. However, Multi-A performance was significantly enhanced compared to Uni-A, indicating that auditory target performance was significantly enhanced by visual distraction. Additional analysis showed an age-specific effect on enhancement between Uni-A and Multi-A depending on the level of visual inhibition. Together, our findings indicated that the loss of visual inhibitory control was beneficial for the auditory target identification presented in a multimodal context in older adults. A likely multisensory information processing strategy in the older adults was further discussed in relation to aged cognition.
老年人的认知控制能力比年轻人差，也更容易分心。以前的研究报告了与年龄相关的选择性注意和抑制控制问题，其结果因刺激和任务呈现的模态和上下文而异。本研究的目的是通过实证研究证明老年人在处理视听信息时存在抑制控制的模态特异性丧失。一组 30 名年轻人（平均年龄=25.23，标准差（SD）=1.86）和 22 名老年人（平均年龄=55.91，SD=4.92）完成了视听轮廓识别任务（AV-CIT）。我们比较了视觉/听觉识别（Uni-V，Uni-A）与对应模态存在干扰时的视觉/听觉识别（Multi-V，Multi-A）的表现。研究结果表明，抑制控制存在模态特异性效应。Uni-V 的表现明显优于 Multi-V，表明听觉干扰显著阻碍了视觉目标识别。然而，Multi-A 的表现明显优于 Uni-A，表明视觉干扰显著增强了听觉目标的表现。进一步的分析表明，Uni-A 和 Multi-A 之间的增强效应在视觉抑制的水平上存在年龄特异性。综上所述，我们的研究结果表明，在多模态环境中，老年人的视觉抑制控制丧失有利于听觉目标的识别。进一步讨论了与年龄认知有关的老年人可能的多感官信息处理策略。
