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The disengagement of visual attention: an eye-tracking study of cognitive impairment, ethnicity and age
journal contribution
posted on 2020-07-21, 15:07 authored by Megan Polden, Thom WilcocksonThom Wilcockson, Trevor J CrawfordVarious studies have shown that Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is associated with an impairment of inhibitory control, although we do not have a comprehensive understanding of the associated cognitive processes. The ability to engage and disengage attention is a crucial cognitive operation of inhibitory control and can be readily investigated using the “gap effect” in a saccadic eye movement paradigm. In previous work, various demographic factors were confounded; therefore, here, we examine separately the effects of cognitive impairment in Alzheimer’s disease, ethnicity/culture and age. This study included young (N = 44) and old (N = 96) European participants, AD (N = 32), mildly cognitively impaired participants (MCI: N = 47) and South Asian older adults (N = 94). A clear reduction in the mean reaction times was detected in all the participant groups in the gap condition compared to the overlap condition, confirming the effect. Importantly, this effect was also preserved in participants with MCI and AD. A strong effect of age was also evident, revealing a slowing in the disengagement of attention during the natural process of ageing.
Funding
EPSRC Grant EP/M006255/1
Sir John Fisher Foundation
History
School
- Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
Brain SciencesVolume
10Issue
7Publisher
MDPI AGVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© The AuthorsPublisher statement
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Acceptance date
2020-07-14Publication date
2020-07-18Copyright date
2020eISSN
2076-3425Publisher version
Language
- en
Depositor
Dr Thom Wilcockson. Deposit date: 21 July 2020Article number
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