Citation

Volosin M, Gaál ZA, Horváth J. Biol. Psychol. 2017; 126: 71-81.

Affiliation

Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Magyar Tudósok körútja 2, H-1117 Budapest, Hungary. Electronic address: horvath.janos@ttk.mta.hu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.biopsycho.2017.04.007

PMID

28411034

Abstract

The present study investigated how fast younger and older adults recovered from a distracted attentional state induced by rare, unpredictable sound events. The attentional state was characterized by the auditory N1 event-related potential (ERP), which is enhanced for sound events in the focus of attention. Younger (19-26 years) and older (62-74 years) adults listened to continuous tones containing rare pitch changes (glides) and short gaps. Glides and gaps could be separated in 150ms, 250ms, 650ms or longer and the task was gaps detection while ignoring glides. With longer glide-gap separations similar N1 enhancements were observable in both groups suggesting that the duration of the distracted sensory state was not affected by aging. Older adults responded, however, slower at short glide-gap separations which indicated that distraction at subsequent levels of processing may have nonetheless more impact in older than in younger adults.

Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

N1; aging; attention; distraction