Age-Related Changes and the Attention Network Task: An Examination of Alerting, Orienting and, Executive Function

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Age-Related Changes and the Attention Network Task ：

An Examination of Alerting, Orienting and, Executive Function

JANINE M. JENINGS, DALE DAGENBACH, CHRISTINE M.

ENGLE AND LAURA J. FUNKE

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Company Logo www.themegallery.com

Outline

Introduction

1 Methods

2 Results

3 Discussion

4

(3)

Introduction (1/17)

Attention often plays an important role in theories of cognitive aging

(Hasher & Zacks, 1979)

Relationship between aging and attention

remains somewhat inconclusive

(Craik & Byrd, 1982)

(4)

Introduction (2/17)

As one recent review of the literature on aging and attention noted

(Rogers, 2000, p. 69)

“Aspects of attention that remain intact for older adults are: selective, focused, divided, and the transition from attention-demanding to automatic processes ”.

“ Aspects of attention that decline for older adults are: selective, divided, and the transition from

attention-demanding to automatic processes. . . ”

“ Some types of attention do show age-related

declines, some types do not, and some types

show declines only in certain contexts”.

(5)

Introduction (3/17)

Attention (selective vs. divided, for example) may be distinct from one another in whole or in part

Age-related effects may indeed vary between them

Discrepancies between studies

Age on those nonattentional processes

The attention & aging literature is beset

It’s difficulty in distinguishing between age-

(6)

Introduction (4/17)

Salthouse (1985, 1994) has made a case

A generalized age-related decline in processing speed

However, Other researchers have argued

(Salthouse et al., 1995; Kramer & Larish, 1996; Tsang & Shaner, 1998)

There are additional aspects of task impairment that are not due to slowing

Even processing speed is controlled

(Madden &

Whiting, 2004)

Problems of interpretation remain

(7)

Introduction (5/17)

Posner and Peterson (1990) who identified three different aspects of attention

The first network

Alerting: frontal & parietal regions of the right

hemisphere

(8)

Introduction (6/17)

The second network

Orienting: areas of the frontal & parietal lobes, including the superior parietal lobe & the

temporal-parietal junction

For example, superior parietal lobe activation

has been found in relation to orienting using

fMRI

(Corbetta et al., 2000)

(9)

Introduction (7/17)

The third network

Top-down executive control: anterior cingulate and dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex

Activations of these areas have been found in Stroop-like tasks involving cognitive conflict

(Pardo et al., 1990; Bench et al., 1993; Carter et al., 1995)

綠紅

(10)

Introduction (8/17)

The Posner spatial cuing task

A peripheral cue, such as flashing the placeholder for the stimulus

A central cue such as an arrow pointing to the stimulus location

Participants to indicate the location of a target

item

(11)

Introduction (9/17)

The Eriksen flanker task

Compared to a no-flanker condition, responses are faster

Faster when the flanker are in the same category

Slower when they are from the opposite one

(12)

Introduction (10/17)

(13)

Introduction (11/17)

(14)

Introduction (12/17)

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Introduction (13/17)

The following results suggest that the orienting network is unaffected by age

With peripheral cues, a similar time course of cuing effects was observed and the old and young adults showed similar costs & benefits of invalid vs. valid cues

(Hartley et al., 1990)

With central cues produced like patterns

^{(Folk and}

Hoyer, 1992)

No age differences associated with peripheral

cues in a letter-discrimination task

(Greenwood et al., 1993)

(16)

Introduction (14/17)

Flanker interference effects

Older adults were less affected by the presence of flankers

(Wright and Elias, 1979)

Older adults＞Younger adults at close ranges

of target-flanker separation, but not at further

ones

(Zeef et al., 1996)

(17)

Introduction (15/17)

A clever variant of the flanker paradigm was used by Naylor and Lavie (1998)

Participants searched a central circular array of a letter ‘‘N’’ for a target item.

A interference ‘‘X’’.

The number of letters in the array varying.

(18)

Introduction (16/17)

The magnitude of the flanker effect

Six items: Old = Young

1 to 4 items: Old ^＞ Young

Only 1 item: Old＞Young

(19)

Introduction (17/17)

Alerting deficits in Alzheimer’s patients

Only a marginally significant difference

between younger and healthy older adults

^(Tales

et al. 2002)

Phasic alertness to be unaffected by both healthy aging and mild-to-moderate

Alzheimer’s disease

(Nebes and Brady, 1993)

(20)

Methods (1/5)

Participants

123 from two different age groups took part

Old: 63 (28 females, 35 males)

• age from 61 to 87

• Wake Forest University alumni

Young: 60 (35 females, 25 males)

• age from 18 to 21

• an introductory psychology pool

(21)

Methods (2/5)

Materials

The Attention Network Task (ANT) consisted of two sets of 96 trails

IBM A20 laptop computer

Participants seated 60 cm from the screen

Participants pressed a key indicating whether an arrow

• Presented above or below a fixation cross

shown in the center of the screen

(22)

Methods (3/5)

Materials (Con’d)

The arrow appeared with one of three different types of flankers

• Congruent arrows (32 times)

• Incongruent arrows (32 times)

• Neutral dashes (32 times)

one of four types of cues

• (24 times) (24 times) (24 times) (24 times)

(23)

Methods (4/5)

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Methods (5/5)

Procedure

Older

• Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE)

• The general health questionnaire

Young

• The general health questionnaire

To ensure the instructions were clear

• 20 practice trails

(25)

Results (1/6)

The ANT allows one to examine three types of attention

Alerting

• No-Cue vs. Double-Cue

Orienting

• Center-Cue vs. Spatial-Cue

Executive function

• Incongruent vs. Congruent

(26)

Results (2/6)

Mean Reaction Times & Accuracy

Age

(no Sig.)

(27)

Results (3/6)

(Sig.) Old (no Sig.) (Sig.) Old (120＞98)

779-757 ≒ 572-529 ≒

769-728 ≒ 538-500 ≒

842-722 ≒ 600-503 ≒

Alertin, Orienting, and Executive Control

(28)

Results (4/6)

Z-score Transformations to Correct for Generalized Slowing

Z-score＝X－X / ^Sx

＝每一分數與算術平均數差值 / 標準差

Older .170 .329 .899 Young .411 .375 .637

Sig. no Sig. no Sig.

(29)

Results (5/6 )

Cue by Flanker Interaction

＞

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⁸⁵

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＞

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Results (6/6)

Orienting: Incong effect ＞ Cong effect 740-688＝52 ＞ 617-582＝35

＞

¹⁰³

＞

¹²²

＞

⁸⁵

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¹²³

(31)

Discussion (1/9)

Use of ANT to compare the attentional processes of alerting, orienting, and executive function simultaneously

between young and older adults yielded significant age

(Fan et al., 2002)

The intact operation of the orienting

network with age is consistent with a body of literature

(Folk & Hoyer, 1992; Greenwood et al., 1993; Hartley et al., 1990;

Lincourt et al., 1997)

Older adults benefit as much as young by

(32)

Discussion (2/9)

When the data were not adjusted for overall speed (before Z-score)

The incongruent flankers had a greater impact on older participants than their younger counterparts

Perhaps less able to inhibit the context surrounding the target stimulus

Z-score transforming the data to correct

Age differences in speed abolished the age × flanker interaction

Implying the increased effect of interference was an

artifact of cognitive slowing

(33)

Discussion (3/9)

Phasic alerting is unaffected by aging

(Nebes &

Brady, 1993; Rabbit, 1984)

However, more recent studies have

identified an age-related decline

(Festa-Martino et al., 2004; Pate et al., 1994)

Festa-Martino et al. (2004) suggest this

discrepancy in the literature is caused by

methodological differences

(34)

Discussion (4/9)

A recent experiment using a modified version of the ANT task (Fernandez- Duque, & Black, 2006)

Fernandez-Duque and Black their alerting cue for 500 msecs

A similar mix of cue types as used here found a significantly larger alerting effect in older

adults

Longer cue durations (500 vs. 100 msecs)

may result in increasing alerting effects in

older adults

(35)

Discussion (5/9)

Phasic alerting increases in older adults

when the warning cue is presented for 750 msec

(Sano et al., 1995)

Use of a “fish” version of the ANT task

with children

(Rueda et al., 2004)

(36)

Discussion (6/9)

Use of a “fish” version of the ANT task with children

(Rueda et al., 2004)

(Con’d)

Alerting effects

• 10-year-old children ＞ adults

Orienting effects

• Age 6 to adulthood (no difference)

Executive function

• Differ only between the ages of 6 to 7

(37)

Discussion (7/9)

Orienting cues affected executive function

Decreasing RT to incongruent flankers

A smaller flanker effect

Alerting cues increased the flanker effect

Reducing RT to congruent flankers

When invalid spatial cue trials are included

(Callejas et al., 2004)

The process of alerting has even been shown

to accelerate orienting

(38)

Discussion (8/9)

Aging seems to have little impact on

orienting and executive function beyond general slowing

A 100-msec alerting cue on performance

A smaller alerting effect in older adults

This effect is due to age-related changes in

the noradrenergic system

(Elrod et al., 1997; Peskind et al., 1995)

(39)

Discussion (9/9)

Successful use of the ANT with older adults

With a cognitive neuroscience approach for exploring changes in attention with age

Combining ANT with fMRI

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Age-Related Changes and the Attention Network Task: An Examination of Alerting, Orienting and, Executive Function

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