Crossmodal selection in attention and action: Age-related changes in cognitive preparation of crossmodal processing and their neural underpinnings

在认知控制的研究中，通常忽略了跨通道刺激、跨通道反应及其映射的影响，以及跨通道环境中的复杂情况对年龄较高的人特别苛刻的事实。因此，在认知-行为和神经-认知水平上研究跨通道加工中年龄相关困难的潜在机制是很重要的。在这个项目中，我们关注一个可能影响跨通道加工的潜在因素，即认知准备。研究表明，在某些条件下，如延长准备时间或预先提出要求的响应，多任务处理的性能可以提高。然而，似乎准备工作的好处在一定程度上与年龄有关。此外，以前关于认知准备的研究大多忽略了通道特定的影响，这可能还会导致年龄相关的差异。最后，关于跨通道认知准备潜在的可能神经过程，我们知之甚少。至于年龄相关的影响，探索神经过程可能有助于更好地理解为什么年轻人和老年人的表现不同，以及神经系统中与年龄相关的变化是否以及如何适应，以便执行与年轻人相同的跨模式心理操作。综上所述，目前的技术水平强烈表明需要进一步研究。为此，我们将在德国和台湾之间建立新的合作关系，将我们在研究跨模式加工(亚琛)和相应的潜在神经过程(台南)方面的能力结合起来。我们的联合研究旨在整合我们之前的研究，以便更深入地理解跨通道加工中的年龄相关效应，并通过在三个工作包中实施三种不同的跨通道范式，考察跨通道加工认知准备的年龄相关变化。a)刺激选择：使用跨通道注意转换范式来探索特定通道一致性效应中与年龄相关的潜在差异；b)(刺激-反应)映射选择：使用跨通道任务映射转换范式来探索老年人在混合任务情景下在选择和准备通道映射方面是否存在更多问题；C)反应选择：我们将设计一个交叉通道反应前导范式，以考察老年人在使用不同效应器时是否在反应准备中表现出障碍。综上所述，这项研究将有助于更好地理解跨通道信息加工中与年龄相关的变化，这一点非常重要，因为在实验实验室以外的自然任务背景下，跨通道加工无处不在，而且理解与年龄相关的认知变化是我们老龄化社会的一项重大挑战。

The influence of crossmodal stimulation, crossmodal responses and their mappings in general as well as the fact that complex situations in a crossmodal context are especially demanding with higher age has rather been neglected in the context of research on cognitive control. Thus, it is important to examine the mechanisms underlying age-related difficulties in crossmodal processing at both the cognitive-behavioral and neuro-cognitive level. In this project, we focus on one potential factor that may influence crossmodal processing, namely cognitive preparation. It has been shown that performance in multitasking can improve under certain conditions such as prolonged preparation time or precuing of a demanded response. However, it seems that preparation benefits are in parts age-related. Furthermore, previous research on cognitive preparation mostly disregarded modality-specific influences, which might additionally contribute to age-related differences. Finally, little is known regarding the underlying possible neural processes of crossmodal cognitive preparation. As regards age-related effects, exploring neural processes might help to better understand why the performance between younger and older adults differs and whether and how age-related changes in neural systems may adapt in order to perform the same crossmodal mental operations as in young adults. Taken together, the current state of the art strongly implies the need for further research. We will act on this by establishing a new cooperation between Germany and Taiwan to combine our competences in the study of crossmodal processing (Aachen) and the corresponding underlying neural processes (Tainan). Our joint research aims to integrate our previous research to achieve a deeper understanding of age-related effects in crossmodal processing and examine age-related changes in cognitive preparation of crossmodal processing on different, yet connected levels of cognitive processing by implementing three different crossmodal paradigms in three work packages a) Stimulus selection: A crossmodal attention switching paradigm is used to explore potential age-related differences in modality-specific congruency effects; b) (Stimulus-Response) Mapping selection: The crossmodal task-mapping switching paradigm is used to explore whether older adults have more problems in selecting and preparing modality mappings in mixed-task situations; c) Response selection: We will design a crossmodal response precuing paradigm to examine whether older adults show impairments in response preparation when using different effectors. Together, this research will help to better understand age-related changes in crossmodal information processing, which is highly important because of the ubiquity of crossmodal processing in natural task contexts outside the experimental lab and because understanding age-related cognitive changes represents a major challenge in our aging society.