Aging and temporal processing: A multi-modality study

描述(申请人提供)：据估计，至少有10%-15%的美国老年人口，或200万-300万人，经历了不止一种感觉模式的损害，包括听觉、视觉和触觉。这项拟议的项目评估了一大群年轻人和老年人在一系列测试中的表现，这些测试衡量了听觉、视觉和触觉的时间处理能力。该项目的主要目的是：(1)确定成年人对感觉输入的时间加工是否受到年龄增长的影响，无论是听觉、视觉还是触觉通道；(2)确定从同一组年轻和老年受试者那里获得的类似时间加工测量的传感器通道之间是否存在相关性；以及(3)确定特定通道内的各种时间加工测量是否相关，而不考虑年龄。第一个目标主要是通过检查同一组年轻人和老年人在时间加工的听觉、视觉和触觉测量上的表现差异，以及通过与年龄的相关性来实现。根据之前在每种感觉通道中进行的时间加工的单独实验，预计老年受试者作为一个群体，在这些任务中的大部分表现都会比年轻人差，而且很可能在每种感觉通道中都会做sc。然而，由于将在所有三种模式中获得一套平行的时间衡量标准，拟议的项目也将能够通过相关分析实现上述目标。此外，关于第二个目标，在给定的年龄组内，在特定的时间加工测量上，不同通道之间的表现相关性将提供强有力的证据，表明这种加工是非时态的，可能共享共同的潜在中央或认知过程。通过这种方式，在拟议的项目中使用青年和老年受试者不仅将阐明老年人所经历的感觉障碍的性质，而且还将揭示跨越不同年龄的各种形式的时间处理机制的性质。结构方程模型将被用来检查测量之间的相关性，并解决不同模式共享受年龄影响的共同时间处理机制的程度。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): It has been estimated that at least 10-15% of the elderly American population, or 2-3 million individuals, experience impairments in more than one sensory modality, including hearing, sight and touch. The proposed project assesses the performance of a large group of young and elderly adults on a battery of tests that measure temporal-processing abilities in the auditory, visual and tactual senses. The primary aims of the proposed project are: (1) to determine whether temporal processing of sensory input by adults is affected by advancing age in either the auditory, visual or tactile modalities; (2) to establish whether correlations exist across sensor modalities for similar measures of temporal processing obtained from the same set of young and elderl, participants; and (3) to determine whether various measures of temporal processing within a particular modality are correlated, regardless of age. The first aim is addressed primarily through examination of differences in performance on auditory, visual and tactile measures of temporal processing between groups comprised of the same set of young and elderly individuals, as well as through correlations with age. Based on isolated experiments on temporal processing conducted previously within each sensory modality, it is anticipated that elderly subjects, as a group, will perform worse than young adults on most of these tasks and will likely do sc for each modality. Since a parallel set of temporal measures will be obtained across all three modalities however, the proposed project also will be able to address the aims identified above through correlational analyses. In addition, regarding the second aim, within a given age group, correlations in performance across modalities on a particular temporal-processing measure will provide strong evidence that such processing is amodal, likely sharing a common underlying central or cognitive process. In this way, use of young and elderly subjects in the proposed project will not only shed light on the nature of sensory impairments experienced b the elderly, but also on the nature of temporal processing mechanisms across modalities regardless of age. Structural equation modeling will be used to examine the correlations between measures and address the degree to which different modalities share a common temporal processing mechanism that is affected by age.