The Role of Sensory Decline In Cognitive Aging

感觉衰退在认知衰老中的作用

• 批准号: 6479146
• 负责人: JENNIFER M GLASS
• 金额: $ 7.55万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2002
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2002-04-01 至 2004-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6479146
• 关键词: age difference; behavioral /social science research tag; clinical research; cognition; human middle age (35-64); human old age (65+); human subject; neural information processing; psychological aspect of aging; sensory discrimination; sensory mechanism; sound perception; stimulus /response; visual perception; young adult human (21-34)

It is well documented that older adults experience both sensory and cognitive decline and that sensory function and cognitive function are correlated in older adults. A large part of this correlation appears to be due to a third factor relating sensory function and cognitive function, most likely neurobiological change. This view has been called the common-cause hypothesis in the literature. However, there may be other ways that sensory decline can affect cognitive performance in older adults that operate in addition to the common cause. This proposal examines the "direct-cause" hypothesis that cognitive performance is directly impaired by poor sensory function in tasks where perceptual demands are high. In particular, stimuli in many tasks are frequently familiar and well-learned verbal items. Because these are well-learned and often occur in a context that provides support for perceptual processing, reduced sensory acuity may not impact cognitive performance. However, stimuli that are not well-learned will rely much more on initial "bottom-up" sensory processing. In these cases, significant portions of the effects due to aging may be explained by sensory function. The direct-cause hypothesis will be tested using two different analytical approaches. In the first, a pre-existing data set containing measures of sensory function (visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, auditory acuity) and measures of cognition that used familiar (i.e., verbal) stimuli and that used unfamiliar (i.e., visuospatial) stimuli will be analyzed using regression techniques. The prediction is that more age-related variance will be explained by contrast sensitivity for the visuospatial tasks than the verbal tasks. In the second approach, auditory discriminability will be experimentally manipulated in a dual- task paradigm. Perceptual identification time has been shown to be experimentally manipulated in a dual-task costs. By manipulating the perceptual difficulty of the task, age differences in dual-task cost should vary accordingly. In one condition, the auditory stimuli will be pure tones, in te other condition the auditory stimuli will be common names. The prediction is that age differences will be smaller for the condition using familiar common names. This work would add to our understanding of the ways by which sensory function can affect cognitive function in older adults and has theoretical and applied implications.

有充分的文献证明，老年人经历了感觉和认知能力的下降，而老年人的感觉功能和认知功能是相关的。这种相关性的很大一部分似乎是由于感官功能和认知功能的第三个因素，很可能是神经生物学变化。 这种观点被称为文献中的公共原因假设。 但是，除了共同原因外，感觉下降可能会影响老年人的认知表现。该提案研究了“直接原因”假设，即认知表现在感知需求很高的任务中受到不良的感觉功能的损害。 特别是，在许多任务中，刺激经常是熟悉且学习良好的口头项目。由于这些是学习良好的，并且经常出现在为感知处理提供支持的情况下，因此感觉敏锐度的降低可能不会影响认知性能。 但是，没有良好学习的刺激将更多地依赖于初始的“自下而上”感觉处理。 在这些情况下，由于感觉函数可以解释由于老化引起的大部分效应。直接原因假设将使用两种不同的分析方法进行检验。 首先，一个预先存在的数据集，其中包含感觉功能的度量（视敏度，对比度灵敏度，听觉敏锐度）和使用熟悉（即语言）刺激的认知度量，并使用回归技术分析了不熟悉的（即视觉疗法）刺激的刺激。 预测是，与口头任务相比，对视觉空间任务的对比敏感性将用更多的年龄相关差异来解释。 在第二种方法中，听觉可区分性将在双重任务范式中进行实验操纵。 知觉识别时间已被证明是通过双重任务成本通过实验操纵的。通过操纵任务的感知困难，双重任务成本的年龄差异应相应差异。 在一种情况下，听觉刺激将是纯音，在其他情况下，听觉刺激将是通用名称。预测是，使用熟悉的通用名称，对于条件的年龄差异将较小。 这项工作将增加我们对感觉功能影响老年人认知功能的方式的理解，并具有理论和应用的含义。