Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Overriding age differences in attentional capture with top-down processing.

Wythe L Whiting1, David J Madden, Katherine J Babcock

  • 1Department of Psychology, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA 24450, USA. whitingw@wlu.edu

Psychology and Aging
|June 15, 2007
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Association of Preoperative Posterior Cingulate Cortex Microstructural Damage With Postoperative Delirium.

Anesthesia and analgesia·2026
Same author

Contributions of Gray Matter Microstructure to Differences in Fluid Cognition and Episodic Memory Across the Healthy Adult Lifespan.

Human brain mapping·2026
Same author

Imaging iron in the brain: solving the puzzle of brain iron, systemic iron, cerebral blood flow, and cognition.

European radiology·2026
Same author

Higher spatial resolution diffusion-weighted imaging improves characterization of white matter disconnection in Alzheimer's disease.

Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.)·2026
Same author

Predicting risk of impending cognitive decline in asymptomatic individuals with early Alzheimer's disease: Insights from cortical diffusion MRI.

Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.)·2025
Same author

Brain activation for actual and imagined hand movement following bilateral hand transplantation.

Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior·2025
Same journal

Semantic and episodic contributions of long-term memory to working memory in young and older adults.

Psychology and aging·2026
Same journal

Older adults exhibit multisensory-specific cognitive control effects.

Psychology and aging·2026
Same journal

Autobiographical memory and metacognition in aging: A preserved ability to monitor memory retrieval.

Psychology and aging·2026
Same journal

Self-perceptions of aging and volunteering in later life: Examining longitudinal bidirectional associations in the German Ageing Survey (DEAS).

Psychology and aging·2026
Same journal

Age-related changes in eye movements during pictorial recall in older adults.

Psychology and aging·2026
Same journal

Gait matters in spatial orientation: Age-related differences in real-world wayfinding and cognitive mapping.

Psychology and aging·2026
See all related articles

Older adults struggle to effectively use top-down information for visual search, especially with informative cues. This difficulty in utilizing feature predictability and cue consistency may stem from limited cognitive resources.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroscience of Aging
  • Human Visual Search

Background:

  • Top-down information influences visual search efficiency.
  • Age-related differences exist in cognitive control and attention.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how top-down information affects age differences in visual search for singleton targets.
  • To examine the role of cue validity and feature consistency in age-related search performance.

Main Methods:

  • Two experiments were conducted using visual search tasks with spatial cues.
  • Participants included younger and older adults.
  • Varying levels of cue validity and consistency with top-down feature settings were manipulated.

Main Results:

Related Experiment Videos

  • Both age groups effectively used target feature predictability with uninformative cues.
  • Older adults showed less efficient use of cue-related top-down information with informative cues.
  • Older adults experienced larger attentional capture effects than younger adults when only bottom-up information was available.

Conclusions:

  • Older adults' ability to use top-down information to guide attention during visual search may be resource-limited.
  • Age differences in visual search are influenced by the interplay between top-down control and bottom-up stimulus salience.