Comparative analysis of the perceptual inhibition between children and older adults.

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.

Perceptual, cognitive and response inhibition in emotional contexts in children.

“…Therefore, the efficiency inverse (EI) index was used, which consists of dividing the RT over accuracy, and because accuracy is dimensionless, the EI is measured in milliseconds. This index compensates for the speed and accuracy tradeoffs, and because of this several research studies have opted to include it as one of the main performance indices (e.g., Bruyer & Brysbaert, 2011;Comesaña, Richards ´, & Vido, 2019). Thus, EI differences were computed by subtracting the EI of trial conditions with less interference from the EI of trial conditions with more interference.…”

The Change Processes in Selective Attention during Adulthood. Inhibition or Processing Speed?

“…To evaluate selective attention, the Inverse Efficiency index -IEwas used in the condition of 32 distractors of the CVS Task. This measure was selected because it is the one that requires the greatest demand for selective attention and the one that makes it possible to maximize intra and inter-subject variability according to what has been reported in other studies carried out in this area with this task (Comesaña et al, 2019;Introzzi, Andrés, et al, 2016;Richards' et al, 2017).…”