Symposium: Aging
Friday, Sep 11, 2015
12:00-13:00
Hörsaal 3
Recovering from the sensory effects of auditory distraction: no difference between young and old adults
Research Centre for Natural Sciences, HAS, Budapest, Hungary
horvath.janos@ttk.mta.hu
Numerous studies suggest that old adults might be more susceptible to distraction than young adults. The present study utilized the auditory N1 event-related potential (ERP) to assess potential age-related differences in the recovery time from distraction-related sensory processing changes. The N1 waveform is enhanced when the eliciting sound events are in the focus of the on-going perceptual task. It has also been shown that distraction – an involuntary attention change triggered by task-irrelevant, infrequent, unpredictable sounds - may “remove” this attentional enhancement for a brief (at least 150 ms, not longer than 650 ms) period of time after a distracter is presented. In the present study we utilized an auditory continuous-stimulation paradigm to assess the temporal characteristics of this distraction effect in young (19-26 years) and old adults (62-74 years). Participants listened to a continuous tone during the experiment and signaled the presence of occasional gaps by pressing a button. Infrequently, unpredictably, the pitch of the continuous tone changed in quick exponential glides. ERPs to gaps following such glides in 150 and 250 ms exhibited reduced N1-amplitudes in comparison to those elicited by gaps separated from glides by 650 ms or longer. Although N1 amplitudes were markedly lower for old adults, the proportional glide-gap separation-related N1-change did not differ between the two age groups. This suggests that the speed of recovery from the sensory effects of distraction is not affected by age.