Impaired sensitivity to spatial configurations in healthy aging.

Healthy aging is associated with decline in social, emotion, and identity perception, which is frequently attributed to deterioration of structures involved in social inference. It is believed that this decline is unlikely to be a result of perceptual aberrations due to intact (corrected) visual acu...

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Published in:Cortex: A Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System & Behavior Vol. 155; pp. 347 - 357
Main Authors: Chard, James, Cook, Richard, Press, Clare
Format: research Journal Article
Published: Masson SPA Oct2022
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: Oct2022
      vid: 155
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      pub: Masson SPA
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        10.1016/j.cortex.2022.05.026
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        atl: Impaired sensitivity to spatial configurations in healthy aging.
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          Chard, James
          Cook, Richard
          Press, Clare
        affil: Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK
      sug:
        subj:
          Judgment
          Visual Perception
          Aged
          Emotions
          Questionnaires
          Social Readjustment Rating Scale
          Aged: 65+ years
      ab: Healthy aging is associated with decline in social, emotion, and identity perception, which is frequently attributed to deterioration of structures involved in social inference. It is believed that this decline is unlikely to be a result of perceptual aberrations due to intact (corrected) visual acuity. Nevertheless, the present studies examine whether more particular perceptual aberrations may be present in healthy aging, that could in principle contribute to such difficulties. The present study examined the possibility that particular deficits in configural processing impair the perception of faces in healthy aging. Across two signal detection experiments, we required a group of healthy older adults and matched younger adults to detect changes in images of faces that could differ either at the local, featural level, or in configuration of these features. In support of our hypothesis, older adults were particularly impaired in detecting configural changes, relative to detecting changes in features. The impairments were found for both upright and inverted faces and were similar in a task with images of inanimate objects (houses). Drift diffusion modelling suggested that this decline related to reduced evidence accumulation rather than a tendency to make configural judgments based on less evidence. These findings indicate that domain-general problems processing configural information contribute to the difficulties with face processing in healthy aging, and may in principle contribute to a range of higher-level social difficulties - with implications also for other groups exhibiting similar patterns in perception and understanding.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
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        research
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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