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Related Concept Videos

Types of Selection01:46

Types of Selection

Natural selection influences the frequencies of particular alleles and phenotypes within populations in several different ways. Primarily, natural selection can be directional, stabilizing, or disruptive. Directional selection favors one extreme trait and shifts the population towards that phenotype while selecting against individuals displaying alternate traits. Stabilizing selection favors an intermediate trait with a narrow range of variation. Deviation from the optimal phenotype towards an...
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Competition

When organisms require the same limited resources within an environment, they may have to compete for them. Competition is a net-negative interaction. Even if two competing individuals or populations do not interact directly, the overall fitness of both competitors is lowered as a result of not having full access to the limited resource.
Natural Selection and Mating Preferences01:06

Natural Selection and Mating Preferences

The principle of natural selection posits that organisms better adapted to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce. This principle is closely intertwined with mating preferences, a key aspect of sexual selection, which evolutionary psychologists believe is driven by instincts to propagate one's genes. Such instincts significantly influence mating behaviors and preferences between genders.
Females, due to their biological roles in conception, pregnancy, and nursing, inherently...
Evolutionary Psychology01:20

Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology explores the origins of human behavior and mental processes by framing them within the context of natural selection, a theory famously propounded by Charles Darwin. This field asserts that many behaviors common across human societies — ranging from instinctive fear reactions to complex social interactions — arose as evolutionary adaptations. These adaptations enhanced the survival and reproductive success of our ancestors, thereby becoming embedded in the human psyche...
Mate Choice01:20

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Mate choice—the decision about whom to mate with—is a type of natural selection, since animals must reproduce to pass down their genes. Mate choice is also called intersexual selection because the behavior occurs between the sexes.
Frequency-dependent Selection01:21

Frequency-dependent Selection

When the fitness of a trait is influenced by how common it is (i.e., its frequency) relative to different traits within a population, this is referred to as frequency-dependent selection. Frequency-dependent selection may occur between species or within a single species. This type of selection can either be positive—with more common phenotypes having higher fitness—or negative, with rarer phenotypes conferring increased fitness.

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Assessing Differences in Sperm Competitive Ability in Drosophila
09:34

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Published on: August 22, 2013

Age, clutter, and competitive selection.

Jason S McCarley1, Yusuke Yamani, Arthur F Kramer

  • 1School of Psychology, Flinders University, Adelaide,South Australia. jason.mccarley@flinders.edu.au

Psychology and Aging
|January 11, 2012
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Older adults struggle more with visual clutter due to increased competition for visual attention. This age-related decline in visual processing is exacerbated by cluttered environments, impacting performance.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Gerontology

Background:

  • Visual selective attention is theorized as a competition within the extrastriate cortex.
  • Older adults often exhibit difficulties processing visual clutter.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if competition for receptive fields contributes to older adults' visual clutter processing deficits.
  • To compare visual clutter processing and attentional competition between young and older adults.

Main Methods:

  • Two experiments involved young and older adults judging target shapes in cluttered and uncluttered displays.
  • Stimulus discriminability and spatial separation between targets were manipulated.
  • Performance decrements with decreased separation indicated competitive selection effects.

Main Results:

  • Both age groups demonstrated a competition-in-clutter effect, with target separation impacting performance more in clutter.
  • Older adults showed significantly greater costs from clutter and a stronger competition-in-clutter effect.
  • Stimulus discriminability influenced competition; less discriminable stimuli showed competition regardless of clutter.

Conclusions:

  • Visual clutter disproportionately impairs older adults' visual performance.
  • Clutter forces more demanding stimulus resolution in older adults, intensifying attentional competition.
  • Age-related differences in visual selective attention contribute to clutter processing difficulties.