Year: 2010
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Background: Cognitive control is an executive function that helps people with inhibiting automatic and readily available responses in conflicting situations, and that aligns our behaviour with our goals. Reduced functions can be seen in different patient groups such as persons with Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia and AD/HD. Elderly people often develop problems with cognitive control, and the aim of the present study was to examine this with a forced-attention dichotic listening paradigm. Method: 15 healthy elderly were tested with a dichotic listening paradigm in which they had to listen selectively to verbal stimuli presented to the left or the right ear. The ability to inhibit the more automatic response of the right-ear stimulus in favour of the left ear response was taken as a measure the cognitive control abilities. Results: The elderly from 55 to 75 years had greater problems with inhibiting an automatic response in favour of the left ear than younger individuals. A significant interaction effect of attention, ear, gender and age was found. Conclusion: Elderly from the age group 55- to 75 years, selectively get problems with inhibiting responses from the right ear. Women do not get this problem before the age of 65 years, while men have problems already at age 55. The findings are consistent with research on the problems that patients with Alzheimer's disease, AD/HD, schizophrenia and some other groups have. This points to the possibility of the same
Author: Erikstad, Nina
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7052445968