Developmental Differences in Visual and Auditory Attention: a Cross-Sectional Study

作者：Guenther Thomas; Konrad Kerstin; Haeusler Joachim; Saghraoui Hafida; Willmes Klaus; Sturm Walter

来源：Zeitschrift fur Neuropsychologie, 2014, 25(3): 143-152.

DOI：10.1024/1016-264X/a000126

• attention
• development
• auditory
• visual
• children
• adults

The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to compare performance on visual and auditory attention tasks along with the developmental trajectories of these systems. Participants between 7 and 77 years of age were examined: 490 subjects (229 males and 261 females) completed the visual and auditory part of a focused-attention task, and 688 subjects (320 males and 368 females) were tested with an alertness task in the two different modalities. Shorter reaction times were observed in the visual condition compared to the auditory condition. This difference was particularly large for children and for the more complex, focused-attention task. However, the gap between the two modalities decreased with age, resulting in significant interaction effects between age and modality for both attention tasks. Attentional performance increased with age, and maximum performance was achieved in early adulthood. For nearly all performance variables, no decrease could be detected with increasing age. In addition, the results of a principal components analysis suggest that, independent of modality, all alertness variables load on one component, whereas the performance variables of the visual and the auditory focused-attention task load on two separate components. Thus, our data suggest that visual and auditory attention rely on distinct attentional systems within the selectivity domain of attention and have distinct developmental trajectories.

• 出版日期2014-9