Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, Vol 51, Issue 4 P201-P216, Copyright © 1996 by The Gerontological Society of America

ARTICLES

Aging and filtering by movement in visual search

AF Kramer, R Martin-Emerson, JF Larish and GJ Andersen
Beckman Institute, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. akramer@s.psych.uiuc.edu

We examined the ability of younger and older adults to selectively process moving items and ignore stationary items in a task that required the search for a target defined by a conjunction of movement and form (i.e., search for a moving X among moving Os and stationary Xs) in displays of 5, 9, 17, and 25 stimuli (Experiment 1) and displays of 5, 10, and 20 stimuli (Experiment 2). We also investigated subjects' performance in two feature search tasks, the search for a target defined by movement or form. Finally, we examined the influence of practice on feature and conjunction search. Younger and older adults searched the displays at similar rates in the feature and conjunction search tasks. Older and younger adults also benefited equivalently from practice. These data suggest age-equivalence in the processes which underlie feature search in dynamic environments as well as those processes responsible for the segregation of moving and stationary objects in the visual field.

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