No abstract

Perceptual inhibition is the executive process responsible for suppressing environmental stimuli that are irrelevant to a complex task in progress. At present, there is not enough evidence of the functioning changes that occur throughout life or tasks to evaluate it in isolation. This study aims to (a) compare the performance of perceptual inhibition in children and older adults, considering the changes inherent to these stages, using a computerized task based on the Conjunction Visual Search paradigm, and (b) describe the changes within each age group based on performance in the indicators of accuracy and response times (RTs). A sample of 72 healthy participants was assessed (36 children between 6 and 9 years old and 36 adults over 60 years old). The results showed statistically significant differences in accuracy for the four conditions of the task in favor of the group of older adults. For the RTs, only significant differences in the condition of 32 distracters were found, being faster in the group of children. There are marked trends in favor of the hypothesis of differential performance within each age group. These results provide knowledge in favor of changes in perceptual inhibition according to the life stage. Likewise, they allow showing empirical evidence about intra-and intergroup differences in the efficiency of inhibitory functioning.