More evidence that older adults become less able to ignore distraction

December, 2010

A new study adds to the evidence that our ability to focus on one thing and ignore irrelevant information gets worse with age, and that this may be a crucial factor in age-related cognitive impairment.

A study involving young (average age 22) and older adults (average age 77) showed participants pictures of overlapping faces and places (houses and buildings) and asked them to identify the gender of the person. While the young adults showed activity in the brain region for processing faces (fusiform face area) but not in the brain region for processing places (parahippocampal place area), both regions were active in the older adults. Additionally, on a surprise memory test 10 minutes later, older adults who showed greater activation in the place area were more likely to recognize what face was originally paired with what house.

These findings confirm earlier research showing that older adults become less capable of ignoring irrelevant information, and shows that this distracting information doesn’t merely interfere with what you’re trying to attend to, but is encoded in memory along with that information.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-11/uot-bat110210.php

Reference:

[1994] Schmitz, T. W., Cheng F. H. T., & De Rosa E.
(2010). Failing to Ignore: Paradoxical Neural Effects of Perceptual Load on Early Attentional Selection in Normal Aging.
J. Neurosci.. 30(44), 14750 - 14758.

seniors

Aging

parahippocampal

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