How does our ability to integrate information across space and time change as we age?

Abstract

This thesis investigated the nature of changes in feature binding ability that occur as a function of healthy ageing. Under the premise that these changes may occur due to reduced attentional resources (Sylvain-Roy et al., 2005), or changes in the ability to use contextual information as cue for recall (Meulenbroek et al., 2010), two hypotheses were tested; the ageing-attention hypothesis, and the ageing-context hypothesis. These hypotheses were tested under intentional binding instructions (e.g. Allen et al., 2006), and incidental binding instructions (e.g. Campo et al., 2010) which also included tests of whether nearby contextual information or absolute location are used in location binding (e.g. Olson & Marshuetz, 2005). The thesis found no support for either the ageing-attention hypothesis or the ageing-context hypothesis. The most valuable findings were the effortful nature of younger adult incidental location binding, and perhaps more crucially, the demonstration that older adult binding deficits may be best explained in terms of inhibitory deficit and differences in processing style between older and younger adults.