Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2006
Previous research has suggested that older adults display deficits in affective-prosodic processi... more Previous research has suggested that older adults display deficits in affective-prosodic processing, while grammaticalprosodic processing remains intact. In the present study, groups of younger and older adults took part in a series of experiments assessing their comprehension of prosodic information at the affective, grammatical and perceptual levels. It was found that older and younger adults performed similarly on perceptual tasks. However, deficits were seen in older adults across a number of tasks: affective-prosodic processing, the use of temporal information to parse syntactic structure, and the use of lexical stress to distinguish adjective-noun pairs from compound nouns. These findings suggest a generalized prosodic deficit in older adults which cannot be ascribed to a primary auditory deficit.
Age-related face recognition deficits are characterized by high false alarms to unfamiliar faces,... more Age-related face recognition deficits are characterized by high false alarms to unfamiliar faces, are not as pronounced for other complex stimuli, and are only partially related to general age-related impairments in cognition. This paper reviews some of the underlying processes likely to be implicated in theses deficits by focusing on areas where contradictions abound as a means to highlight avenues for future research. Research pertaining to the three following hypotheses is presented: (i) perceptual deterioration, (ii) encoding of configural information, and (iii) difficulties in recollecting contextual information. The evidence surveyed provides support for the idea that all three factors are likely to contribute, under certain conditions, to the deficits in face recognition seen in older adults. We discuss how these different factors might interact in the context of a generic framework of the different stages implicated in face recognition. Several suggestions for future investigations are outlined.
The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Jun 11, 2010
We examined the effects of lexical competition and word frequency on spoken word recognition and ... more We examined the effects of lexical competition and word frequency on spoken word recognition and production in healthy aging. Older (n = 16) and younger adults (n = 21) heard and repeated meaningful English sentences presented in the presence of multitalker babble at two signal-to-noise ratios, +10 and −3 dB. Each sentence contained three keywords of high or low word frequency and phonological neighborhood density (ND). Both participant groups responded less accurately to high-than low-ND stimuli; response latencies (from stimulus offset to response onset) were longer for high-than low-ND sentences, whereas response durations-time from response onset to response offset-were longer for low-than high-ND stimuli. ND effects were strongest for older adults in the most difficult conditions, and ND effects in accuracy were related to inhibitory function. The results suggest that the sentence repetition task described here taps the effects of lexical competition in both perception and production and that these effects are similar across the life span, but that accuracy in the lexical discrimination process is affected by declining inhibitory function in older adults.
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) involves declines in language and episodic memory. Episodic memor... more Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) involves declines in language and episodic memory. Episodic memory is often assessed using language tasks. To prevent linguistic factors from confounding recall scores, memory and language should be jointly examined. We explored linguistic patterns on a story recall task among cognitively healthy adults aged 65+ (n=18) and people with amnestic MCI (n=18). Participants completed immediate and delayed (20-30min) recall on a set of novel story recall materials (6 pairs, i.e., 12 stories total). Stories were coded using a propositional coding scheme (where a proposition refers to the smallest unit of meaning), as well as a unit scoring scheme (i.e., individual words). Responses were coded as veridical (word-for-word), gist (general idea), and distortion (error). Linguistic features of the output were coded using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program. Overall, people with MCI produced more verbs, fewer time-related words, and fewer total words than control participants. In the MCI group, delayed unitand proposition-based veridical and gist recall scores were positively correlated with certainty and causation words, indicating that higher certainty about events and their causal links is associated with better memory. Total words were positively correlated with all immediate and delayed recall scores, indicating that amount of linguistic output is strongly linked to memory in MCI. Time-related words were positively correlated with immediate unit-based veridical recall, suggesting that, in MCI, more words denoting time signal better immediate recall of story details. Examining linguistic features of verbal output in memory tasks could improve detection of MCI.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Feb 1, 2016
It has been argued that adults underestimate the extent to which their preferences will change ov... more It has been argued that adults underestimate the extent to which their preferences will change over time. We sought to determine whether such mis-predictions are the result of a difficulty imagining that one's own current and future preferences may differ or whether it also characterizes our predictions about the future preferences of others. We used a perspectivetaking task in which we asked young people how much they liked stereotypically-young-person items (e.g., Top 40 music, adventure vacations) and stereotypically-old-person items (e.g., jazz, playing bridge) now, and how much they would like them in the distant future (i.e., when they are 70 years old). Participants also made these same predictions for a generic same-age, samesex peer. In a third condition, participants predicted how much a generic older (i.e., age 70) same-sex adult would like items from both categories today. Participants predicted less change between their own current and future preferences than between the current and future preferences of a peer. However, participants estimated that, compared to a current older adult today, their peer would like stereotypically-young items more in the future and stereotypicallyold items less. The fact that peers' distant-future estimated preferences were different from the ones they made for "current" older adults suggests that even though underestimation of change of preferences over time is attenuated when thinking about others, a bias still exists.
It is well-established that semantic deficits are observed in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Ho... more It is well-established that semantic deficits are observed in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). However, the extent of impairment in different aspects of semantic function remains unclear, and may be influenced by the tasks used to assess performance. In the present study, people with MCI and cognitively healthy older adults completed a series of tasks assessing lexical access, retrieval, and recognition of semantic information, using different input and output modalities. Control participants outperformed people with MCI in almost all tasks, with the greatest deficits observed in picture naming tasks. This finding is interpreted as reflecting greater deficits in lexical access and/or access to the phonological and orthographic lexicon, and less severe deficits in retrieval and recognition of semantic feature and associative knowledge. In a subset of tasks, relatively greater impairment was also observed in biological compared to man-made items. From a clinical perspective, these results suggest that, while it is preferable that a full semantic battery be included in neuropsychological assessment, in cases where shorter testing time is necessary, picture naming is the task most likely to reveal deficits in people with MCI.
Frequency effects are pervasive in studies of language, with higher frequency words being recogni... more Frequency effects are pervasive in studies of language, with higher frequency words being recognized faster than lower frequency words. However, the exact nature of frequency effects has recently been questioned, with some studies finding that contextual information provides a better fit to lexical decision and naming data than word frequency (Adelman et al., 2006). Recent work has cemented the importance of these results by demonstrating that a measure of the semantic diversity of the contexts that a word occurs in provides a powerful measure to account for variability in word recognition latency (Johns et al., 2012, 2015; Jones et al., 2012). The goal of the current study is to extend this measure to examine bilingualism and aging, where multiple theories use frequency of occurrence of linguistic constructs as central to accounting for empirical results (Gollan et al., 2008; Ramscar et al., 2014). A lexical decision experiment was conducted with four groups of subjects: younger and older monolinguals and bilinguals. Consistent with past results, a semantic diversity variable accounted for the greatest amount of variance in the latency data. In addition, the pattern of fits of semantic diversity across multiple corpora suggests that bilinguals and older adults are more sensitive to semantic diversity information than younger monolinguals.
An audiovisual (AV) speech presentation mode can significantly improve spoken word identification... more An audiovisual (AV) speech presentation mode can significantly improve spoken word identification. Language comprehension and communication in patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) can be compromised; however, little is known about the extent to which patients might benefit from an AV mode. Patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) are at risk for developing AD and can demonstrate parallel but milder difficulties in aspects of language function. Here we report on preliminary findings of a study that investigates the impact of AV speech and sentence context on word identification in patients with MCI and healthy elderly controls. Although both groups performed better in the AV condition compared to an auditory-alone condition and when a constraining sentence context was present, the patients performed worse than controls overall and in the condition that should afford the greatest benefit. This suggests that the cognitive deficits present in MCI may limit their ability to benefit fully from supportive perceptual and linguistic cues.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Mar 20, 2018
People underestimate how much their preferences will change in the future, a phenomenon sometimes... more People underestimate how much their preferences will change in the future, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as a "presentism bias". Recently we found that this presentism bias is attenuated when thinking about the preferences of other people. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether predicting future preferences also differs depending on the level of social distance between self and other. Sixty-seven participants completed a perspective-taking task in which they were required to think about their own preferences, those of a generic peer and those of a close other both now and in the future. They were also asked to consider the preferences of an older adult now. Participants predicted less change between their current and future preferences than between the current and future preferences of a generic peer. Predicted change in preferences for a close other were similar, but not identical, to those made for the self. When considering relevant future preferences, participants predicted less change for themselves than for their close others, and less change for close others than for generic peers. In other words, as social distance increases, the presentism bias decreases. Interestingly, participants estimated that both they and their peers would not change so much that they become similar to current older adults. Simulating the future perspectives of a generic peer or, even better, the current perspectives of an older adult, may thus result in improved long-term decision-making, as it may enable a more realistic estimation of the magnitude of likely changes in the future.
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 2021
ABSTRACT Objective Most research investigating neurocognitive changes in participants with PTSD h... more ABSTRACT Objective Most research investigating neurocognitive changes in participants with PTSD has focused on young adults. Numerous studies have recognized the crucial role of social support in diminishing the likelihood of developing PTSD. The current study evaluates the cognitive performance of middle-aged and older adults with symptoms of PTSD, and examines if perceived social support can act as a cognitive reserve factor. Method The study was conducted using data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, a nationwide study on health and aging. The current study included 1,096 participants in the PTSD group and 22,158 participants in the comparison group, all between the ages of 45 and 85. Participants completed the MOS (Medical Outcomes Study) Social Support Survey as well as neuropsychological tests in the domains of executive functioning, declarative memory, and prospective memory. Results The PTSD group had worse performance in the domains of executive functioning and prospective memory than the comparison group. Furthermore, when examining global cognitive impairments (impairment was defined as scoring 1.5 or more standard deviations below age and education adjusted comparison group), the PTSD group demonstrated greater impairment rates than the comparison group on two or more tests. Moderation analyses revealed that greater social support was associated with better executive functioning for the comparison group, although this was not found to be true for the PTSD group. Conclusion The PTSD group experienced greater cognitive deficits compared to the comparison group. Higher levels of perceived social support were associated with better performance on neurocognitive measures for the comparison group. However, social support did not appear to moderate this relationship for the PTSD group.
Introduction The recording of resting-state EEG may provide a means to predict early cognitive de... more Introduction The recording of resting-state EEG may provide a means to predict early cognitive decline associated with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Previous studies have typically used very short recording times to avoid a confound with drowsiness that may occur in longer recordings. The effects of a longer recording have not however been systematically examined. Methods Eyes-closed resting-state EEG activity was recorded in 40 older adult participants (20 healthy older adults and 20 people with MCI). The recording period was a relatively long 6 minutes, divided into two equal 3-minute halves to determine if drowsiness will be more apparent as the recording progresses. The participants also completed standardized neuropsychological tasks that assessed global cognition (Montreal Cognitive Assessment) and memory (California Verbal Learning Test, Second Edition). A spectral analysis was performed on both short (2 seconds) and long (8 seconds) segments in both 3-minute halves. Resul...
Objectives We investigated rates of cognitive decline at 3-year follow-up from initial examinatio... more Objectives We investigated rates of cognitive decline at 3-year follow-up from initial examination in people reporting mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) with loss of consciousness (LOC) more than a year prior to initial examination. We examined the role of social support as predictor of preserved cognitive function in this sample. Method Analyses were conducted on 440 participants who had self-reported LOC of <1 min, 350 with LOC of 1–20 min, and 10,712 healthy controls, taken from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA), a nationwide study on health and aging. Results People who reported at baseline that they had experienced mTBI with LOC of 1–20 min more than a year prior were 60% more likely to have experienced global cognitive decline than controls at three-year follow-up. Cognitive decline was most apparent on measures of executive functioning. Logistic regression identified increased social support as predictors of relatively preserved cognitive function. Discussio...
Potentially highly relevant but unattended auditory stimuli may result in attention capture. The ... more Potentially highly relevant but unattended auditory stimuli may result in attention capture. The detection of stimulus change is associated with two event-related potentials: the deviant-related negativity (DRN), whose amplitude varies with the extent of change, and the P3a, which is elicited only by stimuli deemed to be highly relevant. In the present study, younger adults (aged 18e30 years) and older adults (aged 65e73 years) were presented with to-be-ignored auditory stimuli while engaged in a visual task. The auditory stimuli consisted of frequently presented standards and six different rarely presented deviants. In older adults, the amplitude of the DRN varied with the extent of deviance: it was significantly larger to the white noise and environmental sound deviants. A large P3a was elicited by these in younger adults but was much reduced in older adults. The DRN results suggest that older adults are able to compute saliency level of unattended stimulus input at an early stage of processing. However, the attenuated P3a results in older adults suggest that a potentially highly salient stimulus is not given sufficient priority to result in a switch of attention from current cognitive demands.
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2006
Previous research has suggested that older adults display deficits in affective-prosodic processi... more Previous research has suggested that older adults display deficits in affective-prosodic processing, while grammaticalprosodic processing remains intact. In the present study, groups of younger and older adults took part in a series of experiments assessing their comprehension of prosodic information at the affective, grammatical and perceptual levels. It was found that older and younger adults performed similarly on perceptual tasks. However, deficits were seen in older adults across a number of tasks: affective-prosodic processing, the use of temporal information to parse syntactic structure, and the use of lexical stress to distinguish adjective-noun pairs from compound nouns. These findings suggest a generalized prosodic deficit in older adults which cannot be ascribed to a primary auditory deficit.
Age-related face recognition deficits are characterized by high false alarms to unfamiliar faces,... more Age-related face recognition deficits are characterized by high false alarms to unfamiliar faces, are not as pronounced for other complex stimuli, and are only partially related to general age-related impairments in cognition. This paper reviews some of the underlying processes likely to be implicated in theses deficits by focusing on areas where contradictions abound as a means to highlight avenues for future research. Research pertaining to the three following hypotheses is presented: (i) perceptual deterioration, (ii) encoding of configural information, and (iii) difficulties in recollecting contextual information. The evidence surveyed provides support for the idea that all three factors are likely to contribute, under certain conditions, to the deficits in face recognition seen in older adults. We discuss how these different factors might interact in the context of a generic framework of the different stages implicated in face recognition. Several suggestions for future investigations are outlined.
The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Jun 11, 2010
We examined the effects of lexical competition and word frequency on spoken word recognition and ... more We examined the effects of lexical competition and word frequency on spoken word recognition and production in healthy aging. Older (n = 16) and younger adults (n = 21) heard and repeated meaningful English sentences presented in the presence of multitalker babble at two signal-to-noise ratios, +10 and −3 dB. Each sentence contained three keywords of high or low word frequency and phonological neighborhood density (ND). Both participant groups responded less accurately to high-than low-ND stimuli; response latencies (from stimulus offset to response onset) were longer for high-than low-ND sentences, whereas response durations-time from response onset to response offset-were longer for low-than high-ND stimuli. ND effects were strongest for older adults in the most difficult conditions, and ND effects in accuracy were related to inhibitory function. The results suggest that the sentence repetition task described here taps the effects of lexical competition in both perception and production and that these effects are similar across the life span, but that accuracy in the lexical discrimination process is affected by declining inhibitory function in older adults.
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) involves declines in language and episodic memory. Episodic memor... more Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) involves declines in language and episodic memory. Episodic memory is often assessed using language tasks. To prevent linguistic factors from confounding recall scores, memory and language should be jointly examined. We explored linguistic patterns on a story recall task among cognitively healthy adults aged 65+ (n=18) and people with amnestic MCI (n=18). Participants completed immediate and delayed (20-30min) recall on a set of novel story recall materials (6 pairs, i.e., 12 stories total). Stories were coded using a propositional coding scheme (where a proposition refers to the smallest unit of meaning), as well as a unit scoring scheme (i.e., individual words). Responses were coded as veridical (word-for-word), gist (general idea), and distortion (error). Linguistic features of the output were coded using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program. Overall, people with MCI produced more verbs, fewer time-related words, and fewer total words than control participants. In the MCI group, delayed unitand proposition-based veridical and gist recall scores were positively correlated with certainty and causation words, indicating that higher certainty about events and their causal links is associated with better memory. Total words were positively correlated with all immediate and delayed recall scores, indicating that amount of linguistic output is strongly linked to memory in MCI. Time-related words were positively correlated with immediate unit-based veridical recall, suggesting that, in MCI, more words denoting time signal better immediate recall of story details. Examining linguistic features of verbal output in memory tasks could improve detection of MCI.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Feb 1, 2016
It has been argued that adults underestimate the extent to which their preferences will change ov... more It has been argued that adults underestimate the extent to which their preferences will change over time. We sought to determine whether such mis-predictions are the result of a difficulty imagining that one's own current and future preferences may differ or whether it also characterizes our predictions about the future preferences of others. We used a perspectivetaking task in which we asked young people how much they liked stereotypically-young-person items (e.g., Top 40 music, adventure vacations) and stereotypically-old-person items (e.g., jazz, playing bridge) now, and how much they would like them in the distant future (i.e., when they are 70 years old). Participants also made these same predictions for a generic same-age, samesex peer. In a third condition, participants predicted how much a generic older (i.e., age 70) same-sex adult would like items from both categories today. Participants predicted less change between their own current and future preferences than between the current and future preferences of a peer. However, participants estimated that, compared to a current older adult today, their peer would like stereotypically-young items more in the future and stereotypicallyold items less. The fact that peers' distant-future estimated preferences were different from the ones they made for "current" older adults suggests that even though underestimation of change of preferences over time is attenuated when thinking about others, a bias still exists.
It is well-established that semantic deficits are observed in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Ho... more It is well-established that semantic deficits are observed in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). However, the extent of impairment in different aspects of semantic function remains unclear, and may be influenced by the tasks used to assess performance. In the present study, people with MCI and cognitively healthy older adults completed a series of tasks assessing lexical access, retrieval, and recognition of semantic information, using different input and output modalities. Control participants outperformed people with MCI in almost all tasks, with the greatest deficits observed in picture naming tasks. This finding is interpreted as reflecting greater deficits in lexical access and/or access to the phonological and orthographic lexicon, and less severe deficits in retrieval and recognition of semantic feature and associative knowledge. In a subset of tasks, relatively greater impairment was also observed in biological compared to man-made items. From a clinical perspective, these results suggest that, while it is preferable that a full semantic battery be included in neuropsychological assessment, in cases where shorter testing time is necessary, picture naming is the task most likely to reveal deficits in people with MCI.
Frequency effects are pervasive in studies of language, with higher frequency words being recogni... more Frequency effects are pervasive in studies of language, with higher frequency words being recognized faster than lower frequency words. However, the exact nature of frequency effects has recently been questioned, with some studies finding that contextual information provides a better fit to lexical decision and naming data than word frequency (Adelman et al., 2006). Recent work has cemented the importance of these results by demonstrating that a measure of the semantic diversity of the contexts that a word occurs in provides a powerful measure to account for variability in word recognition latency (Johns et al., 2012, 2015; Jones et al., 2012). The goal of the current study is to extend this measure to examine bilingualism and aging, where multiple theories use frequency of occurrence of linguistic constructs as central to accounting for empirical results (Gollan et al., 2008; Ramscar et al., 2014). A lexical decision experiment was conducted with four groups of subjects: younger and older monolinguals and bilinguals. Consistent with past results, a semantic diversity variable accounted for the greatest amount of variance in the latency data. In addition, the pattern of fits of semantic diversity across multiple corpora suggests that bilinguals and older adults are more sensitive to semantic diversity information than younger monolinguals.
An audiovisual (AV) speech presentation mode can significantly improve spoken word identification... more An audiovisual (AV) speech presentation mode can significantly improve spoken word identification. Language comprehension and communication in patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) can be compromised; however, little is known about the extent to which patients might benefit from an AV mode. Patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) are at risk for developing AD and can demonstrate parallel but milder difficulties in aspects of language function. Here we report on preliminary findings of a study that investigates the impact of AV speech and sentence context on word identification in patients with MCI and healthy elderly controls. Although both groups performed better in the AV condition compared to an auditory-alone condition and when a constraining sentence context was present, the patients performed worse than controls overall and in the condition that should afford the greatest benefit. This suggests that the cognitive deficits present in MCI may limit their ability to benefit fully from supportive perceptual and linguistic cues.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Mar 20, 2018
People underestimate how much their preferences will change in the future, a phenomenon sometimes... more People underestimate how much their preferences will change in the future, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as a "presentism bias". Recently we found that this presentism bias is attenuated when thinking about the preferences of other people. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether predicting future preferences also differs depending on the level of social distance between self and other. Sixty-seven participants completed a perspective-taking task in which they were required to think about their own preferences, those of a generic peer and those of a close other both now and in the future. They were also asked to consider the preferences of an older adult now. Participants predicted less change between their current and future preferences than between the current and future preferences of a generic peer. Predicted change in preferences for a close other were similar, but not identical, to those made for the self. When considering relevant future preferences, participants predicted less change for themselves than for their close others, and less change for close others than for generic peers. In other words, as social distance increases, the presentism bias decreases. Interestingly, participants estimated that both they and their peers would not change so much that they become similar to current older adults. Simulating the future perspectives of a generic peer or, even better, the current perspectives of an older adult, may thus result in improved long-term decision-making, as it may enable a more realistic estimation of the magnitude of likely changes in the future.
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 2021
ABSTRACT Objective Most research investigating neurocognitive changes in participants with PTSD h... more ABSTRACT Objective Most research investigating neurocognitive changes in participants with PTSD has focused on young adults. Numerous studies have recognized the crucial role of social support in diminishing the likelihood of developing PTSD. The current study evaluates the cognitive performance of middle-aged and older adults with symptoms of PTSD, and examines if perceived social support can act as a cognitive reserve factor. Method The study was conducted using data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, a nationwide study on health and aging. The current study included 1,096 participants in the PTSD group and 22,158 participants in the comparison group, all between the ages of 45 and 85. Participants completed the MOS (Medical Outcomes Study) Social Support Survey as well as neuropsychological tests in the domains of executive functioning, declarative memory, and prospective memory. Results The PTSD group had worse performance in the domains of executive functioning and prospective memory than the comparison group. Furthermore, when examining global cognitive impairments (impairment was defined as scoring 1.5 or more standard deviations below age and education adjusted comparison group), the PTSD group demonstrated greater impairment rates than the comparison group on two or more tests. Moderation analyses revealed that greater social support was associated with better executive functioning for the comparison group, although this was not found to be true for the PTSD group. Conclusion The PTSD group experienced greater cognitive deficits compared to the comparison group. Higher levels of perceived social support were associated with better performance on neurocognitive measures for the comparison group. However, social support did not appear to moderate this relationship for the PTSD group.
Introduction The recording of resting-state EEG may provide a means to predict early cognitive de... more Introduction The recording of resting-state EEG may provide a means to predict early cognitive decline associated with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Previous studies have typically used very short recording times to avoid a confound with drowsiness that may occur in longer recordings. The effects of a longer recording have not however been systematically examined. Methods Eyes-closed resting-state EEG activity was recorded in 40 older adult participants (20 healthy older adults and 20 people with MCI). The recording period was a relatively long 6 minutes, divided into two equal 3-minute halves to determine if drowsiness will be more apparent as the recording progresses. The participants also completed standardized neuropsychological tasks that assessed global cognition (Montreal Cognitive Assessment) and memory (California Verbal Learning Test, Second Edition). A spectral analysis was performed on both short (2 seconds) and long (8 seconds) segments in both 3-minute halves. Resul...
Objectives We investigated rates of cognitive decline at 3-year follow-up from initial examinatio... more Objectives We investigated rates of cognitive decline at 3-year follow-up from initial examination in people reporting mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) with loss of consciousness (LOC) more than a year prior to initial examination. We examined the role of social support as predictor of preserved cognitive function in this sample. Method Analyses were conducted on 440 participants who had self-reported LOC of <1 min, 350 with LOC of 1–20 min, and 10,712 healthy controls, taken from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA), a nationwide study on health and aging. Results People who reported at baseline that they had experienced mTBI with LOC of 1–20 min more than a year prior were 60% more likely to have experienced global cognitive decline than controls at three-year follow-up. Cognitive decline was most apparent on measures of executive functioning. Logistic regression identified increased social support as predictors of relatively preserved cognitive function. Discussio...
Potentially highly relevant but unattended auditory stimuli may result in attention capture. The ... more Potentially highly relevant but unattended auditory stimuli may result in attention capture. The detection of stimulus change is associated with two event-related potentials: the deviant-related negativity (DRN), whose amplitude varies with the extent of change, and the P3a, which is elicited only by stimuli deemed to be highly relevant. In the present study, younger adults (aged 18e30 years) and older adults (aged 65e73 years) were presented with to-be-ignored auditory stimuli while engaged in a visual task. The auditory stimuli consisted of frequently presented standards and six different rarely presented deviants. In older adults, the amplitude of the DRN varied with the extent of deviance: it was significantly larger to the white noise and environmental sound deviants. A large P3a was elicited by these in younger adults but was much reduced in older adults. The DRN results suggest that older adults are able to compute saliency level of unattended stimulus input at an early stage of processing. However, the attenuated P3a results in older adults suggest that a potentially highly salient stimulus is not given sufficient priority to result in a switch of attention from current cognitive demands.
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