Background:Cognitive control is defined as the ability to act flexibly in the environment by either behaving automatically or inhibiting said automatic behaviour and it can be measured using an interleaved pro/anti-sa...Background:Cognitive control is defined as the ability to act flexibly in the environment by either behaving automatically or inhibiting said automatic behaviour and it can be measured using an interleaved pro/anti-saccade task.Decline in cognitive control has been attributed to normal aging and neurological illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease(PD)as well as decline in other cognitive abilities.This parallel might highlight the role played by cognitive control in information processing and working memory.However,little is known about the relationship between cognitive control and other cognitive processes such as visual memory,decision making,and visual search.We thus propose to correlate the incidence of impaired cognitive control with deficits in visual memory,decision making and visual search in three groups:younger adults,older adults and patients with idiopathic PD.Methods:Seventy-one participants,namely 34 adults(M=22.75,SD=3.8),22 older adults(M=67.4,SD=8.3),and 20 PD patients(M=65.59,SD=8.2)performed four tasks:interleaved pro/anti-saccade,visual memory,decision making,and serial and pop-out visual search.Results:Results show that within each group,anti-saccade error rate(ER)were significantly and negatively correlated with visual memory ER(ryounger=−0.378,P=0.036;rolder=−0.440,Polder=0.046;rPD=−0.609,P=0.016).On the other hand,correct decision-making reaction times(RT)were significantly correlated with anti-saccade ER,and RTs only in older adults(rER=0.529,P=0.014;rRT=0.512,P=0.018)and PD patients(rER=0.727,P=0.012;rRT=0.769,P=0.001).For visual search,PD patients showed a significant relationship between RTs for correct pro-saccades and pop-out(r=0.665,P=0.007),and serial(r=0.641,P=0.010)search RTs.Furthermore,there was a significant correlation between MoCA scores and anti-saccade RTs(r=−0.559,P=0.030)and ER(r=−0.562,P=0.029)in PD patients.Taken together,these results support the hypothesis of PD patients’reliance on bottom-up processes as top-down processes decline.For younger adults,there was a significant correlation between serial search performance and both anti-saccade ER(r=0.488,P=0.005),and correct pro-saccade ER(r=0.413,P=0.021).In older adults,this relationship was absent,but anti-saccade ER significantly correlated with pop-out search times(r=0.473,P=0.030).Conclusions:We found significant relationships between cognitive tasks and cognitive control as measured through the interleaved pro/anti-saccade task across and within participant groups,providing evidence of the appropriateness of the use of the interleaved pro/anti-saccade task as a measure of overall cognitive control.展开更多
Background:Age related macular degeneration(AMD)is one of the main causes of vision loss in older adults,generating,in most cases,a central scotoma that reduces central visual acuity(Noble&Chaudhary,2010).People a...Background:Age related macular degeneration(AMD)is one of the main causes of vision loss in older adults,generating,in most cases,a central scotoma that reduces central visual acuity(Noble&Chaudhary,2010).People affected by AMD have to rely on peripheral visual information and would highly benefit from efficiently allocating their attention to the periphery.Indeed,attention can improve peripheral spatial resolution(Carrasco,Ling&Read,2004)and can be allocated to a certain expanse of space outside of the central visual span,known as the attentional span.Attentional span has been shown to be decreased in people with AMD with less attention allocated to the periphery and more to the central visual field(Cheong et al.,2008),however it remains unknown whether aging is also a contributing factor.Methods:Fourteen healthy younger(mean age=21.8 years,SD=1.5)and 8 older adults(mean age=69.6 years,SD=7.3)performed a pop-out and a serial version of a visual search task,in the presence of different sized gaze-contingent invisible and visible artificial central scotomata(no scotoma,3°diameter,5°and 7°).Participants were asked to indicate as quickly as possible whether a target was present or not among distractors whose number varied(16,32 or 64 objects).We wished to determine whether the size of the scotoma,occluding different degrees of central vision,affected visual search differently for younger vs.older participants.Results:Both the younger and older participants showed higher reaction times(RTs)to find the target for the serial version(M=2,074 ms for younger adults,M=3,853 ms for older adults)compared to the pop-out version(M=866 ms,M=1,475 ms,P<0.001)and for more distractors(32 distractors compared to 16,and 64 compared to 32,P<0.01).Older adults showed longer RTs than younger adults for both versions of the task(P<0.01).We found a significant effect of scotoma size on older adults(3°scotoma M=3,276 ms;7°scotoma M=3,877 ms,P<0.05),however,accurate performance was higher with no scotoma(96%vs.92%,P<0.05)in the pop-out search task.This suggests that older participants privileged a fast decision at the expense of performance in those cases.For the younger adults,RTs were higher in the serial search task in the presence of a scotoma(M=2,074 ms)compared to the control condition(M=1,665 ms,P>0.05).Conclusions:These results suggest that older adults take longer to perform visual search compared to younger adults and tend to use peripheral visual less than younger adults;larger central scotomas disrupted their performance but not that of younger participants,who performed equally well with different central scotoma sizes.These findings suggest that aging is a contributing factor in the decrease of the peripheral attentional span.展开更多
文摘Background:Cognitive control is defined as the ability to act flexibly in the environment by either behaving automatically or inhibiting said automatic behaviour and it can be measured using an interleaved pro/anti-saccade task.Decline in cognitive control has been attributed to normal aging and neurological illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease(PD)as well as decline in other cognitive abilities.This parallel might highlight the role played by cognitive control in information processing and working memory.However,little is known about the relationship between cognitive control and other cognitive processes such as visual memory,decision making,and visual search.We thus propose to correlate the incidence of impaired cognitive control with deficits in visual memory,decision making and visual search in three groups:younger adults,older adults and patients with idiopathic PD.Methods:Seventy-one participants,namely 34 adults(M=22.75,SD=3.8),22 older adults(M=67.4,SD=8.3),and 20 PD patients(M=65.59,SD=8.2)performed four tasks:interleaved pro/anti-saccade,visual memory,decision making,and serial and pop-out visual search.Results:Results show that within each group,anti-saccade error rate(ER)were significantly and negatively correlated with visual memory ER(ryounger=−0.378,P=0.036;rolder=−0.440,Polder=0.046;rPD=−0.609,P=0.016).On the other hand,correct decision-making reaction times(RT)were significantly correlated with anti-saccade ER,and RTs only in older adults(rER=0.529,P=0.014;rRT=0.512,P=0.018)and PD patients(rER=0.727,P=0.012;rRT=0.769,P=0.001).For visual search,PD patients showed a significant relationship between RTs for correct pro-saccades and pop-out(r=0.665,P=0.007),and serial(r=0.641,P=0.010)search RTs.Furthermore,there was a significant correlation between MoCA scores and anti-saccade RTs(r=−0.559,P=0.030)and ER(r=−0.562,P=0.029)in PD patients.Taken together,these results support the hypothesis of PD patients’reliance on bottom-up processes as top-down processes decline.For younger adults,there was a significant correlation between serial search performance and both anti-saccade ER(r=0.488,P=0.005),and correct pro-saccade ER(r=0.413,P=0.021).In older adults,this relationship was absent,but anti-saccade ER significantly correlated with pop-out search times(r=0.473,P=0.030).Conclusions:We found significant relationships between cognitive tasks and cognitive control as measured through the interleaved pro/anti-saccade task across and within participant groups,providing evidence of the appropriateness of the use of the interleaved pro/anti-saccade task as a measure of overall cognitive control.
文摘Background:Age related macular degeneration(AMD)is one of the main causes of vision loss in older adults,generating,in most cases,a central scotoma that reduces central visual acuity(Noble&Chaudhary,2010).People affected by AMD have to rely on peripheral visual information and would highly benefit from efficiently allocating their attention to the periphery.Indeed,attention can improve peripheral spatial resolution(Carrasco,Ling&Read,2004)and can be allocated to a certain expanse of space outside of the central visual span,known as the attentional span.Attentional span has been shown to be decreased in people with AMD with less attention allocated to the periphery and more to the central visual field(Cheong et al.,2008),however it remains unknown whether aging is also a contributing factor.Methods:Fourteen healthy younger(mean age=21.8 years,SD=1.5)and 8 older adults(mean age=69.6 years,SD=7.3)performed a pop-out and a serial version of a visual search task,in the presence of different sized gaze-contingent invisible and visible artificial central scotomata(no scotoma,3°diameter,5°and 7°).Participants were asked to indicate as quickly as possible whether a target was present or not among distractors whose number varied(16,32 or 64 objects).We wished to determine whether the size of the scotoma,occluding different degrees of central vision,affected visual search differently for younger vs.older participants.Results:Both the younger and older participants showed higher reaction times(RTs)to find the target for the serial version(M=2,074 ms for younger adults,M=3,853 ms for older adults)compared to the pop-out version(M=866 ms,M=1,475 ms,P<0.001)and for more distractors(32 distractors compared to 16,and 64 compared to 32,P<0.01).Older adults showed longer RTs than younger adults for both versions of the task(P<0.01).We found a significant effect of scotoma size on older adults(3°scotoma M=3,276 ms;7°scotoma M=3,877 ms,P<0.05),however,accurate performance was higher with no scotoma(96%vs.92%,P<0.05)in the pop-out search task.This suggests that older participants privileged a fast decision at the expense of performance in those cases.For the younger adults,RTs were higher in the serial search task in the presence of a scotoma(M=2,074 ms)compared to the control condition(M=1,665 ms,P>0.05).Conclusions:These results suggest that older adults take longer to perform visual search compared to younger adults and tend to use peripheral visual less than younger adults;larger central scotomas disrupted their performance but not that of younger participants,who performed equally well with different central scotoma sizes.These findings suggest that aging is a contributing factor in the decrease of the peripheral attentional span.
