The effects of age on attentional disengagement and inhibitory control

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event The effects of age on attentional disengagement and inhibitory control Damien Erohin1* and Alison Bowling1 1 Southern Cross University, Psychology, School of Health and Human Sciences, Australia Aims: Previous research on the Oculomotor Capture Task (OCT) found that older adults make a greater percentage of reflexive saccades to a distractor than younger adults. This finding may be due to a decrease in ability to disengage attention. This study is aimed at determining whether performance on a Posner attentional disengagement task, and a Flanker interference task can predict error rates on the OCT in older adults. It is hypothesised that participants' performance on the Posner and Flanker tasks will positively correlate with their performance on the OCT. Method: Participants (n = 27) completed three tasks. The OCT involved participants looking at six grey dots on a computer. After 1000ms the colour of the five dots changed to red. Simultaneously, an extra dot (distractor) appeared. Participants had to look at the remaining grey dot. The Flanker task required participants to respond to the identity of a letter, H or E, flanked by either congruent or incongruent letters. The Posner task comprised a red cue, followed by a square that had a gap on the top or bottom of it. Participants had to indicate which it was. Results: Results showed that there was a moderate correlation between percentage captures and the difference in RT on the Posner task, r = .35, p = .067. There was a significant correlation between age and percentage capture on the OCT, r = .53, p = .004. Conclusions: The results showed that percentage captures increased with age, supporting previous research. The moderate correlation between percentage captures and performance on the Posner task suggests that time taken to disengage attention from a distractor may predict performance on the OCT. Keywords: Inhibitory Control, older adults, attentional disengagement, Oculomotor capture task Conference: 12th Annual Psychology Research Conference, 2015, Coffs Harbour, Australia, 25 Sep - 26 Sep, 2015. Presentation Type: Research Topic: Psychology Citation: Erohin D and Bowling A (2015). The effects of age on attentional disengagement and inhibitory control. Front. Psychol. Conference Abstract: 12th Annual Psychology Research Conference, 2015. doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2015.66.00025 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 23 Sep 2015; Published Online: 23 Sep 2015. * Correspondence: Mr. Damien Erohin, Southern Cross University, Psychology, School of Health and Human Sciences, Coffs Harbour, NSW, 2450, Australia, d.erohin.10@student.scu.edu.au Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Damien Erohin Alison Bowling Google Damien Erohin Alison Bowling Google Scholar Damien Erohin Alison Bowling PubMed Damien Erohin Alison Bowling Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.