Object-based attentional selection and aging

The authors conducted 2 studies to examine potential age-related difference s in object-based attentional selection. Participants were briefly presente d with pairs of wrenches and were asked to make I response if both target p roperties (i.e., an open end and a hexagonal end) were present and another response if only a single target property was present in the display. The c ritical manipulation was whether the target properties were present on 1 wr ench or distributed between 2 wrenches. Space-based models of selective att ention predict no difference in performance between these conditions. Howev er, object-based attentional selection models predict better performance wh en both target properties appear on a single object. The results from both of the studies were consistent with object-based models of attentional sele ction. Furthermore, both young and old adults showed similar performance ef fects, suggesting the object-based attentional selection is insensitive to normal aging.