Age-related differences in the attentional white bear

Area of Science:

• Cognitive psychology
• Neuroscience of aging

Background:

• Aging populations often show deficits in proactive inhibition of attention.
• Proactive attention allocation, directing focus to predictable distractor locations, is crucial but unassessed in aging.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate proactive attention allocation in older adults using the attentional white-bear paradigm.
• To determine if aging affects the ability to proactively allocate attention to potentially ignored locations.

Main Methods:

• Participants (older and younger adults) completed the attentional white-bear paradigm.
• This task involves identifying central letters amidst predictable flankers, followed by a dot-probe task to measure attentional bias.

Main Results:

• No age differences in proactive attention allocation were found under low cognitive load.
• Under high cognitive load (reduced flanker presentation), older adults exhibited a diminished white-bear effect.
• This suggests impaired proactive attention allocation in older adults when cognitive demands increase.

Conclusions:

• Proactive allocation of attention to expected distractor locations may be impaired in older adults.
• This impairment becomes evident under conditions of increased cognitive load, impacting attentional control in aging.