Lateralization of peripherally and centrally masked words in young and elderly people

Twenty three-letter, vertical words were presented to the right or left visual fields followed by either a flash, a visual noise, or a pattern mask at various stimulus onset asynchronies. For both young and elderly adults, target identification decreased from the flash to the pattern mask condition, whereas the magnitude of the right visual advantage increased. Although the elderly people identified fewer targets than the young, especially in the pattern mask condition, the magnitude of the right visual field advantage did not vary with age. The results argue against the hypothesis that the cerebral hemispheres deteriorate at different rates with age.