ATTENTIONAL PROCESSES IN NORMAL AND IMPAIRED ELDERLY

我们试图了解的心理和生物心理方面的 注意力和注意力的正常和病理老化 流程. 我们还关心如何运用这些知识来发展 改善注意力和认知功能的策略。 今年 我们关注的是， 在存在竞争性听觉噪声的情况下的听觉输入，以及 对内部刺激的无意识注意力转移与思维有关 生产 我们有证据支持老年人 在比赛时，选择适当的听觉输入有更大的困难 输入正在发生。 此外，这一更大的困难似乎是 与健康状况无关，由慢性 疾病 对内部刺激的不自主注意转移被发现， 儿童时期多动的成年人更常发生， 更深层次的抑郁 这一结果支持了以下观点， 对内部心理事件的无意识注意转移可能是由以下因素驱动的： 大脑中思维产生的水平。 在接下来的一年里，我们计划 研究注意力障碍对认知功能的影响， 在正常衰老和病理衰老中， 老年痴呆症等疾病。

We seek to understand the psychological and biopsychological aspects of normal and pathological aging in terms of attention and attentional processes. We are also concerned with applying that knowledge to develop strategies for improving attentional and cognitive functioning. This year we were concerned with the basis for an age decrement in attending to auditory input in the presence of competing auditory noise and in how involuntary attentional shifts to internal stimuli are related to thought production. We have evidence supporting the conclusion that older adults have greater difficulty selecting appropriate auditory input when competing input is occurring. Furthermore, this greater difficulty appears to be unrelated to health status as determined by the presence of chronic disease. Involuntary attentional shifts to internal stimuli were found to occur more often in adults who were hyperactive as children and less often with deeper levels of depression. This outcome supports the view that involuntary shifts of attention to internal mental events may be driven by the level of thought production in the brain. Over the next year we plan to examine the contribution of attentional dysfunction to cognitive dysfunction to cognitive dysfunction in normal aging and in pathological aging such as Alzheimer's disease.