Aging and Visual Attention

ABSTRACT— Older adults are often slower and less accurate than are younger adults in performing visual-search tasks, suggesting an age-related decline in attentional functioning. Age-related decline in attention, however, is not entirely pervasive. Visual search that is based on the observer's expectations (i.e., top-down attention) is relatively preserved as a function of adult age. Neuroimaging research suggests that age-related decline occurs in the structure and function of brain regions mediating the visual sensory input, whereas activation of regions in the frontal and parietal lobes is often greater for older adults than for younger adults. This increased activation may represent an age-related increase in the role of top-down attention during visual tasks. To obtain a more complete account of age-related decline and preservation of visual attention, current research is beginning to explore the relation of neuroimaging measures of brain structure and function to behavioral measures of visual attention.     

Conflict and Consensus: Educational,Moral and Political Dimensions - Guest Editor's Introduction

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

Pushing mom away: Embodied cognition and avoidant attachment

The objective of this research was to examine embodied psychological defense—the way in which defensive processes are manifest in basic motor responses. Forty-one participants were instructed to physically push or pull a lever in response to lexical stimuli presented on a computer display. Participants who were relatively avoidant with respect to attachment were faster to push the lever away from themselves when presented with the word “mom.” These results suggest that basic avoidant motives are automatically primed when attachment-related stimuli are processed, and that these tendencies manifest themselves in basic, motor-specific ways.     

Divided Visual Attention and Left Hemisphere Activation Among Psychopathic and Nonpsychopathic Offenders

Recent divided attention studies suggest the impulsive antisocial behavior of psychopaths may be related to deficient processing of information under conditions that place substantial demands on left-hemisphere-specific processing resources (left hemisphere activation (LHA) hypothesis; D. S. Kosson [1996, 1998]). To examine performance under conditions constraining eye movements and covert shifts of attention, 26 psychopathic and 46 nonpsychopathic inmates completed a divided attention task in which lateralized stimuli appeared briefly and simultaneously in the left visual field (LVF) and right visual field (RVF) of a monitor. Targets were either presented primarily in the RVF to induce LHA or were equiprobable in LVF and RVF to promote equal activation (EA) of left and right hemisphere resources. Psychopaths were less accurate than nonpsychopaths only under LHA conditions; within-group comparisons also revealed a substantial decrement from EA to LHA only in psychopaths. Thus, psychopaths’ performance deficits were specific to conditions priming left hemisphere resources asymmetrically.     

A broad assessment of theory of mind in adolescence: The complexity of mindreading

The aim of this research was to provide an articulated assessment of several different ToM components, namely first- vs. third-person, egocentric vs. allocentric, and first- vs. second-order ToM, in preadolescence and adolescence. Our expectations for the sample of 80 juveniles that participated in the research were that: (1) ToM abilities would improve with age; (2) participants would perform better at first-person than at third-person tasks; (3) participants would perform better at first-order than at second-order tasks; (4) girls will perform systematically better than boys. We also explored possible differences in performance (5) in the allocentric vs. the egocentric perspectives as well as (6) in the comprehension of different types of mental states, namely desires, beliefs and positive and negative emotions. Overall our expectations were confirmed. Our data confirmed that all ToM aspects we investigated keep maturing during preadolescence and adolescence.     

Introduction to This Special Issue: Complex Thought and Construction of Identity

This Introduction summarizes the rationale for three Special Issues in the Journal of Adult Development. The first, the present Special Issue, is on the themes of complex thought and the construction of identity. Summaries of the six empirical and theoretical articles in this first Special Issue appear below. The argument is made that work in this area adds to our knowledge about the complex network of factors present in and intersecting with adult development.     

Musical metaphors: Evidence for a spatial grounding of non-literal sentences describing auditory events

This study investigated whether the spatial terms high and low, when used in sentence contexts implying a non-literal interpretation, trigger similar spatial associations as would have been expected from the literal meaning of the words. In three experiments, participants read sentences describing either a high or a low auditory event (e.g., The soprano sings a high aria vs. The pianist plays a low note). In all Experiments, participants were asked to judge (yes/no) whether the sentences were meaningful by means of up/down (Experiments 1 and 2) or left/right (Experiment 3) key press responses. Contrary to previous studies reporting that metaphorical language understanding differs from literal language understanding with regard to simulation effects, the results show compatibility effects between sentence implied pitch height and response location. The results are in line with grounded models of language comprehension proposing that sensory motor experiences are being elicited when processing literal as well as non-literal sentences.     

Cognitive And Self-Regulation Aspects Of Perfectionism And Their Implications For Treatment: Introduction To The Special Issue

The current article provides an overview of the papers included in this special issue on the cognitive and self-regulation aspects of perfectionism and their implications for treatment. Themes expressed in these papers include the association between perfectionism and deficits in cognitive self-management, the significant link between distress and automatic thoughts reflecting the need to be perfect, the importance of examining mediators and moderators of the association between perfectionism and psychological distress, and the specific role of perfectionism in suicidal tendencies and self-harm. It is also argued that certain core features of perfectionism and its associated correlates tend to impede treatment progress. Central factors associated with perfectionism that have a deleterious impact on treatment progress include the fear of failure and fear of embarrassment and exposure, a punishing orientation toward the self, pessimism and hopelessness about the possibility of recovery, and a rigid adherence to unrealistic goals and standards, including goals for treatment and recovery. We describe case studies illustrating treatment resistance among perfectionists and we reiterate the growing need for empirical research on the efficacy of clinical interventions designed for perfectionists. This article was supported by major research grants from Health Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada to the first two authors, and a Canada Research Chair in Personality & Health awarded to the first author.     

How do young children determine location? Evidence from disorientation tasks

Previous studies show that following disorientation children use the geometry of an enclosed space to locate an object hidden in one of the corners [e.g. (Hermer, L., & Spelke, E. (1996). Modularity and development: A case of spatial reorientation. Cognition, 61, 195-232)]. These studies have used a disorientation procedure that involves rotating the viewer (with eyes closed). Here, we examine 18- to 25-month-olds' spatial coding in two disorientation tasks--involving either viewer or space rotation. Importantly, the rotational movements in both tasks could not be visually tracked. Children were tested in either task (viewer- or space-movement) from either inside or outside a triangular (isosceles) space (with one unique and two equivalent corners). In the viewer-movement task, performance was above chance, regardless of which corner contained the object. In the space-movement task, performance was above chance at only the unique corner. On both tasks, performance was better from inside the space than from outside. The implications for how children determine location are discussed.     

Visual search for positional relationships between pattern elements

The purpose of these experiments was to illustrate how a search for positional relationships between the elements in a stimulus pattern is effortful and serial, whereas a search for pattern elements (without requiring any positional information) takes place rapidly and in parallel. In all three experiments of this study, the target and distractor patterns consisted of two vertical line segments. In the experiment concerning the search for positional relationships between pattern elements, one of the line segments in a line pair had a gap, and the observer's task was to indicate whether the positional order of the two lines was identical in all the line pairs of the display, or whether the line segments were in a mirror-image order in one line pair (the target). In the two experiments concerning the search for pattern elements (no positional information was required), the observer's task was to look for a line pair with one gap line (the target) among line pairs containing two broken lines or among line pairs with unbroken lines. In all three tasks, the reaction time for a correct target detection was measured. The results showed that the search in the first task was highly serial, and in the second and third tasks of "feature" searches, the search time was nearly independent of the number of distractor pairs. It is suggested that this dissociation may be interpreted in the context of the quality of information processing in extrafoveal vision, i. e. the elements of a stimulus pattern can be clearly visible outside the fovea, but it is not possible to perceive accurately the positional relationships between them.