Age-related changes in involuntary and voluntary attention as reflected incomponents of the event-related potential (ERP)

The present paper provides an overview of age-related changes in both invol untary and voluntary attention in adult subjects as manifested in scalp-rec orded ERPs. A decline in orienting with old age was inferred from a substan tial reduction with age in the magnitude of deviance-related ERP components like MMN, target as well as nontarget P3s, novelty P3 and N400. A review o f focused attention studies further suggested that old and young subjects d o not differ substantially in the quality of attentional operations. In old subjects early selection processes, as reflected in their selection potent ials, have a somewhat slower onset than in young subjects, especially in co nditions in which selection is based upon complex discrimination of stimulu s features. Futhermore, the global pattern emerging from visual and memory search studies is that search-related negativities in the ERPs are smaller and of longer duration in old than in young subjects over the central and a nterior scalp sites. These effects could indicate that controlled search is less intense or takes more time per search operation in old than in young subjects. At more posterior scalp sites there was tendency towards an enhan ced search-related negativity that could reflect a specific difficulty (or compensatory increase in mental effort) of old subjects in spatially locati ng targets in complex visual fields. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rig hts reserved.