A MULTIMODAL ASSESSMENT OF SENSORY THRESHOLDS IN AGING

Young and elderly subjects yielded forced-choice detection thresholds in each of seven sensory tasks: (I) taste of sodium chloride, (2) smel l of butanol, (3) cooling, (4) low-frequency vibrotaction, (5) high-fr equency vibrotaction, (6) low-frequency hearing and (7) high-frequency hearing. Average scores across these tasks nearly perfectly separated the 22 elderly from the 15 young subjects. For individual modalities, however separation between the groups varied from complete (high-freq uency touch) to negligible (low-frequency hearing). Scores on the Bost on Picture Naming Test and especially the Wechsler Logical Memory Test correlated strongly with average threshold score (Pearson r = .84) an d moderately with scores on individual modalities. This sensory-cognit ive link is not caused, as might be supposed, by diminishing age-relat ed capacity to handle the detection task because the very same task re sulted in negligible age effect (low-frequency hearing) and large effe ct (high-frequency hearing) in the same subjects.