The present project possesses two long-term objectives. The first is to determine empirically the role of attention in adult age differences in one category of cognitive performance, visual search and classification tasks. The second is to investigate the potential influence of health status (specifically, mild essential hypertension) on age-%elated changes in attentional processes. Experiments 1-12 in the present project will compare the performance of relatively healthy. community-- dwelling young and older adults on visual search and classification tasks. These tasks require that subjects make, on each trial, a choice response regarding whether a target item (from a pre-assigned set) is present in a visual display. Experiments 1-4 will examine age differences in the allocation of attention within a trial. These four experiments will test a quantitative model in which the time required to allocate attention to a cued display location is independent (within limits) of the distance of this location from fixation. Experiments 5-9 will examine age differences in the allocation of attention across trials. An issue to be addressed in these five studies is whether a single quantitative model can incorporate the effects of target-identity cuing, as well as the effects of display-location cuing. Experiments 10-12 will be concerned with the composition of the display items rather than with the dynamic properties of attentional allocation. In these three experiments, the confusability of the target and nontarget items will be varied, and theoretical accounts based on stimulus similarity and feature integration will he compared. Experiments 13 and 14 will investigate the potential interaction of age and health status in visual search performance. These two studies will include subjects with mild essential hypertension, as well as normotensive individuals. A question of interest in these two experiments is whether the pattern of age-related decline in attentional processing will be evident at a younger age for hypertensives than for normotensives. The present project is designed to improve current theoretical accounts of age-related change in cognitive functioning and to provide new information on the contribution of health status to this age-related change.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01AG002163-13
Application #
2048677
Study Section
Life Course and Prevention Research Review Committee (LCR)
Project Start
1980-04-01
Project End
1996-03-31
Budget Start
1994-04-01
Budget End
1995-03-31
Support Year
13
Fiscal Year
1994
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Duke University
Department
Psychiatry
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
071723621
City
Durham
State
NC
Country
United States
Zip Code
27705
Madden, D J; Pierce, T W; Allen, P A (1996) Adult age differences in the use of distractor homogeneity during visual search. Psychol Aging 11:454-74
Madden, D J; Allen, P A (1995) Aging and the speed/accuracy relation in visual search: evidence for an accumulator model. Optom Vis Sci 72:210-6
Madden, D J; Connelly, S L; Pierce, T W (1994) Adult age differences in shifting focused attention. Psychol Aging 9:528-38
Blumenthal, J A; Madden, D J; Pierce, T W et al. (1993) Hypertension affects neurobehavioral functioning. Psychosom Med 55:44-50
Pierce, T W; Madden, D J; Siegel, W C et al. (1993) Effects of aerobic exercise on cognitive and psychosocial functioning in patients with mild hypertension. Health Psychol 12:286-91
Madden, D J (1992) Selective attention and visual search: revision of an allocation model and application to age differences. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 18:821-36
Allen, P A; Madden, D J; Groth, K E et al. (1992) Impact of age, redundancy, and perceptual noise on visual search. J Gerontol 47:P69-74
Madden, D J; Pierce, T W; Allen, P A (1992) Adult age differences in attentional allocation during memory search. Psychol Aging 7:594-601
Madden, D J; Allen, P A (1991) Adult age differences in the rate of information extraction during visual search. J Gerontol 46:P124-6
Allen, P A; Madden, D J (1990) Evidence for a parallel input serial analysis model of word processing. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 16:48-64

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