Department of Psychology, College of Humanities and Management, Guizhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Guiyang, 550025, China.
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, Hubei University, Wuhan, 430062, China.
Neuropsychologia. 2022 Sep 9;174:108346. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108346. Epub 2022 Aug 13.
Studies have revealed that visual attentional load modulated audiovisual integration (AVI) greatly; however, auditory and visual attentional resources are separate to some degree, and task-irrelevant auditory information could arouse much faster and larger attentional alerting effects than visible information. Here, we aimed to explore how auditory attentional load influences AVI and how aging could have an effect. Thirty older and 30 younger adults participated in an AV discrimination task with an additional auditory distractor competing for attentional resources. The race model analysis revealed highest AVI in the low auditory attentional load condition (low > no > medium > high, pairwise comparison, all p ≤ 0.047) for younger adults and a higher AVI under the no auditory attentional-load condition (p = 0.008), but there was a lower AVI under the low (p = 0.019), medium (p < 0.001), and high (p = 0.021) auditory attentional-load conditions for older adults than for younger adults. The time-frequency analysis revealed higher theta- and alpha-band AVI oscillation under no and low auditory attentional-load conditions than under medium and high auditory attentional-load conditions for both older (all p ≤ 0.011) and younger (all p ≤ 0.024) adults. Additionally, Weighted Phase lag index (WPLI) analysis revealed higher theta-band and lower alpha-band global functional connectivity for older adults during AV stimuli processing (all p ≤ 0.031). These results suggested that the AVI was higher in the low attentional-load condition than in the no attentional-load condition but decreased inversely with increasing of attentional load and that there was a significant aging effect in older adults. In addition, the strengthened theta-band global functional connectivity in older adults during AV stimuli processing might be an adaptive phenomenon for age-related perceptual decline.
研究表明，视觉注意力负荷极大地调节了视听整合（AVI）；然而，听觉和视觉注意力资源在某种程度上是分开的，与可见信息相比，任务无关的听觉信息会引起更快、更大的注意力警觉效应。在这里，我们旨在探讨听觉注意力负荷如何影响 AVI，以及衰老如何产生影响。30 名老年参与者和 30 名年轻参与者参加了一项视听辨别任务，同时有额外的听觉干扰物争夺注意力资源。赛马模型分析显示，年轻参与者在低听觉注意力负荷条件下（低 > 无 > 中 > 高，两两比较，均 p ≤ 0.047）的 AVI 最高，在无听觉注意力负荷条件下（p = 0.008）的 AVI 更高，而在低（p = 0.019）、中（p < 0.001）和高（p = 0.021）听觉注意力负荷条件下的 AVI 则低于年轻参与者。时频分析显示，无论在年轻参与者还是老年参与者中，在无和低听觉注意力负荷条件下，theta 频段和 alpha 频段的 AVI 振荡均高于中高听觉注意力负荷条件（所有 p ≤ 0.011）。此外，加权相位滞后指数（WPLI）分析显示，在处理视听刺激时，老年参与者的 theta 频段和较低的 alpha 频段的全局功能连接性更高（所有 p ≤ 0.031）。这些结果表明，在低注意力负荷条件下的 AVI 高于无注意力负荷条件，但随着注意力负荷的增加而呈反比下降，并且在老年参与者中存在显著的年龄效应。此外，在处理视听刺激时，老年参与者的 theta 频段的全局功能连接性增强可能是与年龄相关的感知下降的一种适应现象。
