Visual spatial attention in elderly: Analysis of the orienting effect

Aging is characterized by a decline in the spatial orienting that negatively affects daily life activities, making the elderly poorly able to select quickly and correctly the areas and/or the objects of interest for the activities they are doing. Aims of this study were to analyse the age-related effects on attentional orienting, costs and benefits. Twenty-seven Young (Age: 23, 33; SD: 1, 30) and twenty-seven Elderly (Age: 61, 74; SD: 6, 44) completed the ANTI-Fruit, which use strawberries and pears as target and flankers stimuli. Participants were required to respond, by clicking the right or left button on the mouse, to the fruit on the center of one semicircle consisting of four fruits (flankers). Before the presentation of the stimuli, an asterisk appeared in the same position of the upcoming target (valid condition); in the opposite position than the one signalled by the cue (invalid condition); in no-cue condition no cue was presented. Reaction times (RTs) were used to estimate: orienting effect (Invalid-Valid), attentional benefits (no-cue-valid) and attentional-costs (invalid-no-cue). The ANOVAs (Elderly, Young) revealed that orienting-effect (F1,52 = 8, 47; p.01; pg2 = 0.14) and costs were higher in elderly than in young (F1,52 = 7,02; p = 0.01; pg2 = 0.11). Findings of the present study suggested that the impairment of the orienting in the elderly could be due to a greater difficulty in reorienting the attention from an invalid to a valid position. The attentional costs in the elderly people could be due to an impairment in voluntary processes of spatial attention.