NTU Psychology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK.
NTU Psychology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK.
Neurobiol Aging. 2024 Oct;142:65-72. doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2024.08.003. Epub 2024 Aug 15.
Some research has shown that older adults benefit more from multisensory information than do young adults. However, more recent evidence has shown that the multisensory age benefit varies considerably across tasks. In the current study, older (65 - 80) and young (18 - 30) adults (N = 191) completed a speeded perceptual discrimination task either online or face-to-face to assess task response speed. We examined whether presenting stimuli in multiple sensory modalities (audio-visual) instead of one (audio-only or visual-only) benefits older adults more than young adults. Across all three experiments, a consistent speeding of response was found in the multisensory condition compared to the unisensory conditions for both young and older adults. Furthermore, race model analysis showed a significant multisensory benefit across a broad temporal interval. Critically, there were no significant differences between young and older adults. Taken together, these findings provide strong evidence in favour of a multisensory benefit that does not differ across age groups, contrasting with prior research.
一些研究表明，老年人比年轻人从多感官信息中获益更多。然而，最近的证据表明，多感官年龄优势在不同任务中差异很大。在当前的研究中，老年人（65-80 岁）和年轻人（18-30 岁）（N=191）通过在线或面对面的方式完成了一项快速感知辨别任务，以评估任务响应速度。我们研究了在多种感觉模式（视听）中呈现刺激是否比在一种感觉模式（仅听觉或仅视觉）中对老年人的益处更大。在所有三个实验中，与单感觉条件相比，多感觉条件下年轻人和老年人的反应速度都明显加快。此外，种族模型分析显示，在广泛的时间间隔内存在显著的多感官优势。关键的是，年轻人和老年人之间没有显著差异。总之，这些发现为多感官优势提供了有力的证据，这种优势在不同年龄组中没有差异，与之前的研究形成对比。
