An Investigation of Age-Related Differences in Value-Driven Attentional Capture

Graduation date: 2016Previous research on age-related differences in attentional capture has indicated that older adults \ud are more susceptible to distraction than younger adults and this has been interpreted as a reduced \ud capacity to inhibit distraction in late life. Recently, however, there have been discrepancies in the \ud literature about in what circumstances older adults are more susceptible to distraction than \ud younger adults. Additionally, theoretical work has emerged in the attentional capture literature \ud which indicates that more sophisticated theory is needed to fully understand attention capture. \ud The present study was conducted in order to provide some clarification about attentional capture \ud across the lifespan. We used a recently developed paradigm to examine the effects of reward and \ud motivation on attentional capture in younger adults who were paid, younger adults who received \ud course credit, and older adults who were paid. Our results indicated that older adults were no \ud more susceptible to distraction than younger adults in the task even when both groups were paid. \ud Additionally, compensation did not affect the magnitude of attentional capture by stimuli that \ud had previously been associated with gain or loss, had a neutral association, or when no distractor \ud was present. We replicated previous research which has demonstrated enhanced attentional \ud capture by previously rewarding, but irrelevant stimuli and extend these findings to gain\ud associated stimuli. Results are interpreted within the context of several major theories of \ud cognitive aging, the inhibitory deficit and the generalized slowing view