Older adults tend to be more prone to distraction compared with young adults, and this age-related deficit has been attributed to a deficiency in inhibitory processing. However, recent findings challenge the notion that aging leads to global impairments in inhibition. To reconcile these mixed findings, we investigated how aging modulates multiple mechanisms of attentional control by tracking the timing and direction of eye movements. When engaged in feature-search mode and proactive distractor suppression, older adults made fewer first fixations to the target but inhibited the task-irrelevant salient distractor as effectively as did young adults. However, when engaged in singleton-search mode and required to reactively disengage from the distractor, older adults made significantly more first saccades toward the task-irrelevant salient distractor and showed increased fixation times in orienting to the target, longer dwell times on incorrect saccades, and increased saccadic reaction times compared with young adults. Our findings reveal that aging differently impairs attentional control depending on whether visual search requires proactive distractor suppression or reactive distractor disengagement. Furthermore, our oculomotor measures reveal both age-related deficits and age equivalence in various mechanisms of attention, including goal-directed orienting, selection history, disengagement, and distractor inhibition. These findings help explain why conclusions of age-related declines or age equivalence in mechanisms of attentional control are task specific and reveal that older adults do not exhibit global impairments in mechanisms of inhibition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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衰老会损害反应性注意力控制，但不会损害主动性干扰抑制。


与年轻人相比，老年人往往更容易分心，这种与年龄相关的缺陷被归因于抑制处理的缺陷。然而，最近的研究结果对衰老导致整体抑制受损的观点提出了挑战。为了协调这些复杂的发现，我们研究了衰老如何通过跟踪眼球运动的时间和方向来调节注意力控制的多种机制。当进行特征搜索模式和主动干扰抑制时，老年人对目标的首次注视较少，但与年轻人一样有效地抑制与任务无关的显着干扰。然而，当处于单一搜索模式并需要反应性地脱离干扰物时，老年人对与任务无关的显着干扰物进行的首次扫视明显更多，并且在定向目标时表现出增加的注视时间，在不正确的扫视上停留时间更长，与年轻人相比，扫视反应时间增加。我们的研究结果表明，衰老对注意力控制的损害程度不同，具体取决于视觉搜索是否需要主动抑制干扰物或反应性干扰物脱离。此外，我们的动眼神经测量揭示了各种注意力机制中与年龄相关的缺陷和年龄等效性，包括目标导向、选择历史、脱离和干扰抑制。这些发现有助于解释为什么注意力控制机制中与年龄相关的衰退或年龄等效性的结论是特定于任务的，并揭示老年人在抑制机制中并未表现出整体损伤。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。