Here goes another myth about older adults shot down in flames!
Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center recently focused on the effects of age on multisensory attention, or the way the senses work together. (Click here for link to full report.)
Dr Paul J. Laurienti, lead researcher on the study said that Wake Forest Baptist wanted to find out if older adults had a harder time paying attention. They wanted to find out if seniors were affected differently in their ability to enhance or suppress relevant information. “There are two kinds of attention we were interested in studying– voluntary attention and involuntary attention,” said Laurienti. “We all know that we can choose to focus on one sense and ignore another. For instance, you might be able to ignore the sounds of the television while you read the paper. but sometimes a very salient stimulus can capture your attention anyway–for instance, if the fire alarm went off while you were reading the paper.”
With the 55+ senior population now the fastest growing demographic in the country, knowing how to reach this huge market and how they pay attention is of vital importance to many companies.
The data showed that older adults can still successfully engage their attention, both in terms of speeding up and slowing down. More importantly older adults were also quite similar to young adults in how much of their attention was captured involuntarily. Even as we age, this study suggests that the brain’s ability to engage multisensory attention remains intact.
