The Examination of Aging and Attention Control With Optical Imaging
Peltz, Carrie Brumback
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/82148
Description
Title
The Examination of Aging and Attention Control With Optical Imaging
Author(s)
Peltz, Carrie Brumback
Issue Date
2007
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Fabiani, Monica
Department of Study
Psychology
Discipline
Psychology
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Psychology, Experimental
Language
eng
Abstract
The purpose of this dissertation project was to utilize a detailed analysis to start exploring the contributions of aging and individual differences to attention control. Experiment I describes eye movement, behavioral, and event-related optical signal (EROS) data during blocked versions of the pro- and antisaccade tasks for younger and older adults. The results of this study show that younger adults have more attentional control than older adults, evidenced by fewer errors and faster brain responses during the antisaccade task. Unfortunately, recording errors and a small sample size precluded further analysis of this data set. Experiment 2 examined eye movements, behavior, and brain activity (recorded by EROS) in younger and older adults during a task with randomized pro- and antisaccade trials. This comprehensive data set showed the different brain activation patterns dominated the EROS analysis. The younger and older adults appeared to use different control strategies to perform the tasks. Specifically, the younger adults relied on more task-general attention-related brain areas to perform the task while the older adults showed greater activity in more task-specific brain areas. Similar to the younger adults, older adults with high working memory capacity utilized more task-general attention brain areas when compared with older adults with low working memory capacity. This study is an interesting example of how an in-depth analysis can give a full range of data about how task-related information is processed and how it may be processed differently by various groupings of participants.
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