Investigating modality-specific age-related inhibitory deficits.
Published: 2005
Language: eng
Number of pages: 194
Description: The filtering and organization of incoming information is facilitated through the process of inhibition. Subjective questionnaires indicate that older adults have great difficulty in inhibiting irrelevant auditory information in everyday situations. However, recent experimental data (e.g. Murphy, McDowd & Wilcox, 1999) have failed to find age age-related deficits in auditory inhibition. The current study examined age differences in inhibitory abilities in a visual and auditory variant of the Flanker Task (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974). The precedence effect was employed to create perceived spatial separation between the target and distractors in the auditory modality. In both modalities all subjects had difficulty inhibiting the flankers, and in the visual modality this effect was larger for the older participants. An added working memory component differentially affected the two age groups, possibly due to compensatory strategies employed by the younger participants. These results serve to inform research into possible modality-specific inhibitory mechanisms.
Notes: Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 44-02, page: 1051.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

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