Chapter 24 Aging, Feature Integration, and Visual Selective Attention

Abstract

In the quarter century since Rabbitt's (1965) classic demonstration of an age deficit in visual search, much research has been devoted to explicating the mechanism(S) underlying the age decrement. Feature integration theory (FIT) is useful for framing the various patterns of age effects and the present review supports its application in this field. Within FIT, age decrements in visual processing may be located in either or both of two stages of processing: feature extraction and feature integration. Our studies demonstrate differential patterns of age effects depending on which stage of processing is emphasized. When feature integration is emphasized the traditional pattern of age decrement in visual search is obtained; when feature extraction is emphasized there is no age difference. In divided attention tasks our findings also suggest an age-related deficit when feature integration is emphasized, but not when feature extraction is emphasized. Our studies suggest further that an age constricted perceptual window cannot account for either the differential age benefit associated with spatial location cuing in visual search, or for the performance tradeoffs associated with divided and focused attention.