Older adults do not show enhanced benefits from multisensory information on speeded perceptual discrimination tasks

Atkin, C ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5086-1173, Stacey, JE ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4035-712X, Allen, HA, Henshaw, H, Roberts, KL ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8735-2249 and Badham, SP ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6890-102X, 2024. Older adults do not show enhanced benefits from multisensory information on speeded perceptual discrimination tasks. Neurobiology of Aging, 142, pp. 65-72. ISSN 0197-4580

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Abstract

Some research has shown that older adults benefit more from multisensory information than do young adults. However, more recent evidence has shown that the multisensory age benefit varies considerably across tasks. In the current study, older (65 – 80) and young (18 – 30) adults (N = 191) completed a speeded perceptual discrimination task either online or face-to-face to assess task response speed. We examined whether presenting stimuli in multiple sensory modalities (audio-visual) instead of one (audio-only or visual-only) benefits older adults more than young adults. Across all three experiments, a consistent speeding of response was found in the multisensory condition compared to the unisensory conditions for both young and older adults. Furthermore, race model analysis showed a significant multisensory benefit across a broad temporal interval. Critically, there were no significant differences between young and older adults. Taken together, these findings provide strong evidence in favour of a multisensory benefit that does not differ across age groups, contrasting with prior research.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Neurobiology of Aging
Creators:	Atkin, C., Stacey, J.E., Allen, H.A., Henshaw, H., Roberts, K.L. and Badham, S.P.
Publisher:	Elsevier
Date:	October 2024
Volume:	142
ISSN:	0197-4580
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2024.08.003 DOI S0197458024001349 Publisher Item Identifier 2198787 Other
Rights:	© 2024 the authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	27 Aug 2024 09:18
Last Modified:	27 Aug 2024 09:18
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/52089

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