Age-Invariant Benefits of Spatiotemporal Predictions Amidst Distraction during Dynamic Visual Search
Nir Shalev, Sage Boettcher, Anna Christina Nobre · 2024
Visual search tasks are commonly used to study how people guide their attention amidst distraction. Developmental studies have used visual search to explore age-related differences in attention. Typical findings show that performance declines and sensitivity to distraction increases in older compared to younger adults. Such findings are taken as evidence of the declining abilities in goal-driven attention. However, standard visual search tasks use static displays and therefore fail to capture the challenges and opportunities in natural environments, which include predictive structures within extended contexts. To investigate how adults of different ages guide their attention in dynamic and extended contexts, we used our recently developed Dynamic Visual Search (DVS). In DVS targets and distractors compete over time and embedded spatiotemporal regularities afford prediction-led guidance of attention. Critically, we manipulated the levels of distraction to chart whether and how benefits of expectations and deficits from distraction varied with age. Younger and older adults searched for multiple visual targets as they faded in and out of the display among distractors while varying the number of distracting elements. Half the targets always appeared at the same time and approximate locations and could be predicted. While we found evidence for decrement and elevated sensitivity to distraction with increasing age, benefits from predictions occurred in all groups. Interestingly, regardless of age, effects of predictions were only significant during periods of high distraction. This work extends our understanding of attention control through ageing to dynamic settings and indicates a dissociation between goal-directed and learning-driven and attentional guidance.