Age-related differences in the statistical learning of target selection and distractor suppression.

Abstract

In recent years, the use of implicit mechanisms based on statistical learning (SL) has emerged as a strong factor in biasing visuospatial attention, so that target selection is improved at frequently attended locations and distractor filtering is facilitated at frequently suppressed locations. Although these mechanisms have been consistently described in younger adults, similar evidence in healthy aging is scarce. Therefore, we studied the learning and persistence of SL of target selection and distractor suppression in younger and older adults in visual search tasks where the frequency of target (Experiment 1) or distractor (Experiment 2) was biased across spatial locations. The results show that SL of target selection was preserved in the older adults so, similar to their younger counterparts, they showed a strong and persistent advantage in target selection at locations more frequently attended. However, unlike young adults, they did not benefit from implicit SL of distractor suppression, so that distractor interference was maintained throughout the experiment independently of the contingencies associated with distractor locations. Taken together, these results provide novel evidence of distinct developmental patterns for SL of task-relevant and task-irrelevant visual information, likely reflecting differences in the implementation of proactive suppression attentional mechanisms between younger and older adults.

Aging Impairs Reactive Attentional Control but Not Proactive Distractor Inhibition

“…Finally, we identified that deficiencies in selection history, specifically intertrial priming, do not explain why older adults show slowing in performance. This finding is consistent with the aging literature that selection history effects are preserved in older adults over different attention tasks (Howard Jr. et al, 2004;Lega et al, 2023;Lyon et al, 2014;Smyth & Shanks, 2011).…”

“…Our findings that top-down processing is delayed, and that early proactive inhibition is preserved in older adults would also support this notion. However, there are some studies that conclude that proactive distractor suppression is impaired in older adults (Ashinoff et al, 2019(Ashinoff et al, , 2020Lega et al, 2023;Lustig & Jantz, 2015). Furthermore, Ashinoff et al (2020) suggests that older adults shift from proactive inhibitory processing to reactive control in a global/local task.…”

Aging impairs reactive attentional control but not proactive distractor inhibition.

“…Finally, we identified that deficiencies in selection history, specifically intertrial priming, do not explain why older adults show slowing in performance. This finding is consistent with the aging literature that selection history effects are preserved in older adults over different attention tasks (Howard et al, 2004; Lega et al, 2023; Lyon et al, 2014; Smyth & Shanks, 2011).…”

“…Our findings that top-down processing is delayed, and that early proactive inhibition is preserved in older adults would also support this notion. However, there are some studies that conclude that proactive distractor suppression is impaired in older adults (Ashinoff et al, 2019(Ashinoff et al, , 2020Lega et al, 2023;Lustig & Jantz, 2015). Furthermore, Ashinoff et al (2020) suggest that older adults shift from proactive inhibitory processing to reactive control in a global/local task.…”

Eye movements reveal age differences in how arousal modulates saliency priority but not attention processing speed

“…The authors found that older adults maintain preserved mechanisms of orienting during feature search and exhibit impaired goal-directed attentional control with the alerting cue as seen in the Attention Network Test, in addition to being significantly distracted by the salient distractor as in the aging and inhibition literature. Furthermore, older adults displayed age equivalence in mechanisms of selection history as previously observed (Howard Jr. et al, 2004; Lega et al, 2023; Lyon et al, 2014; Smyth & Shanks, 2011) and interestingly, could inhibit the salient distractor when the task design required proactive suppression. Although significant advances have been made to understand how aging affects mechanisms of attentional control, the neurobiological bases of why specific networks of attention are affected and why others remain unaltered is yet unknown.…”