Ageing and Visual Orienting in Response to Complex Spatial Cues

Abstract

An experiment is reported in which young and older adults performed a visual orienting task and a cue discrimination task. In the visual orienting task symbolic cues (letters) provided predictive information concerning the likely location of a target stimulus. Two letters, drawn from a pool of four ‘valid’ and four ‘invalid’ letters, were presented bilaterally, at either central or peripheral locations. In the cue discrimination task participants were presented with the same bilateral letter stimuli, and indicated whether these represented a valid letter on the right with an invalid letter on the left, or vice versa. In the visual orienting task young adults shifted attention appropriately in response to the letter cues, but older adults failed to do this. Older participants also performed more poorly on the cue discrimination task. However, even older participants who performed as well as young participants on the cue discrimination task failed to orient in response to the letter cues. Results are discussed in terms of effects of ageing on the ability to forge functionally effective links between different task components in the course of learning how to perform new perceptuomotor skills.