INHIBITORY PROCESS IN SELECTIVE ATTENTION AND AGING

选择性注意和衰老的抑制过程

• 批准号: 2049968
• 负责人: JOAN M MCDOWD
• 金额: $ 9.65万
• 依托单位: POMONA COLLEGE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 1990
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1990-09-01 至 1994-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/2049968
• 关键词: age difference; aging; attention; auditory stimulus; autonomic nervous system; behavioral habituation /sensitization; cognition; human subject; memory; neural information processing; neural inhibition; neural initiation; psychometrics; psychomotor reaction time; psychophysiology; statistics /biometry; stimulus /response

DESCRIPTION (Author's Abstract): The present proposal tests the hypothesis that age-related declines in inhibitory function account for age differences in selective attention. Attention is a complex function of the nervous system involving a balance between the processes of facilitation and inhibition. It is postulated here that aging is associated with changes in the inhibitory control of behavior and age-related deficits in attentional functioning represent a disruption of the balance between facilitatory and inhibitory processes. The series of experiments in the present proposal was designed to examine the role of inhibitory processes in age differences in attention. Three experiments involve psychophysiological measures of attention in the autonomic nervous system. These studies are intended to examine physiological processes of habituation and inhibition, using orienting paradigms in which the autonomic orienting response is taken to reflect the allocation of attention. If the model of age-associated decline in inhibitory function is valid, this decline should be evidenced by reduced habituation to irrelevant information on the part of older adults. Three further experiments examine age differences in inhibitory processing in the context of the negative priming paradigm. The phenomenon of negative priming depends on efficient inhibitory processes, and so allows the straightforward prediction that older adults should exhibit reduced negative priming, or even none at all. The body of work proposed here tests a specific hypothesis about the locus of age differences in attentional functioning, and thus can make an important contribution to scientific understanding of aging and selective attention.

描述（作者的摘要）：目前的建议检验假设 与年龄相关的抑制功能的下降占年龄的说明 选择性关注的差异。 注意是复杂的功能 神经系统涉及促进过程之间的平衡 和抑制。 在这里假定衰老与 对行为和年龄相关缺陷的抑制控制的变化 注意功能代表了破坏 促进和抑制过程。 一系列实验 目前的建议旨在检查抑制过程的作用 注意力的年龄差异。 三个实验涉及 自主神经系统中关注的心理生理学测量。 这些研究旨在检查 习惯和抑制，使用定向范例，其中 自主定向响应是为了反映 注意力。 如果年龄相关的抑制功能下降模型 是有效的，这种下降应通过减少习惯来证明 老年人的信息无关。 另外三个 实验检查上下文中抑制性处理的年龄差异 负启动范式。 负启动的现象 取决于有效的抑制过程，因此允许 老年人应降低的直接预测 负面启动，甚至根本没有。 这里提出的工作主体 测试有关年龄差异源的特定假设 注意功能，因此可以为 对衰老和选择性关注的科学理解。