Chapter 6: Sensory Systems (Vision and hearing) Flashcards
What are the parts of the eye
- cornea
- lens
- ciliary body
- retina
What does the cornea do and how does it change with age ?
- the cornea is a protective layer on the eye
- with age the cornea increases curvature and thickness, also appears duller
How does the lens of the eye change with age?
- becomes more yellow
- hardens
- thickens
- less light in, 30% amount of the light as a young eye (vision is darker)
What is Presbyopia
This is the decreased ability of the eye to accommodate, creates a hard time focusing on nearby objects
- this is why older people need glasses
- primary aging
- avoid smoking, use blue light glasses
How does the overall acuity (sharpness) of eyesight decrease in older adults?
- dynamic vision is worse than static vision
- light and dark adaptation takes longer
What are the causes of blindness?
- cataracts
- glaucoma
- macular degeneration
- diabetic retinopathy
What are Cataracts?
- opaque spots on the lens (clouding on the lens of the eye)
- primary aging
- surgery can fix
What is Glaucoma?
- pressure build up in the eye, start losing vision in the peripheral vision
- (tunnel vision )
- group of eye conditions that damage the optic nerve
What is Macular Degeneration?
- destruction of macula (central vision)
- wet macular degeneration is characterized by blood vessels that grow under the retina and leak, sudden onset
- dry macular degeneration is more common, happens over years
- looks kind of like reversed tunnel vision, centre of vision is blocked
What is Diabetic Retinopathy?
- number of problems related to arteries
- related to diabetes
- black splotches in vision
- blood vessels in the retina at the back of the eye swell, leak, bleed
What are the effects of visual changes with age and what can be done?
- need more light
- more affected by glare, changes in light, shifting focus
- what can be done?
surgery
glasses
What is Presbycusis
- reduced sensitivity to high-pitched tones
- age-related hearing loss
- largely environmental damage, but genetics play some role
- more problems for men
- about a third of adults 65 years of age will experience some loss
- worse in background noise
- social difficulties
What is Sensorineural loss?
damaged hair cells in the ear, resulting in hearing loss
- inner ear or sensory organs (hair?)
Metabolic changes related to hearing in older adults happens where in the ear?
in cochlea
How should you talk to an older adult
- make sure there is enough light
- reduce background noise
- keep voice low
- do not talk to them like a child
Social difficulties related to hearing in older adults?
- loss of independence
- social isolation
- irritation
- paranoia
- depression
What is the information processing model?
sensory register (need attention) moves to working memory (needs rehearsal) finishes in the long term memory
Low level processing is impacted by?
hearing and vision
High level processing
previous experiences and knowledge
Processing Speed
- processing speed: the amount of time it takes for an individual to analyze incoming information, formulate decisions and prepare response
- the one universal age-related change
- the integrity of the CNS
- primary aging
What is Simple Reaction Time?
- responding to stimulus as fast as possible
eg. pushing the key as soon as they see the target such as a red circle appearing on a screen.
What is Choice Reaction Time?
- more than one stimulus
- each requires a different response
eg: when you see yellow tap with left hand, if u see green tap right
What are the Inter-individuals differences in reaction time?
- faster when younger, slow decline
- athletic older adults- faster
- declines in processing speed leads to deficits in memory and attention
What is the General Slowing Hypothesis?
- inter-individual difference
- loss of speed in nervous system, this leads to poorer information processing
- believes that all parts of nervous system and brain become less efficient with age
What is the Age Complexity Hypothesis?
- with complexity, slowing of the system has greater effects (processing speed)
eg, Brinley plot (plots reaction time of young adults to older adults,
What is Selective Attention?
- choose information to process further while simultaneously suppressing irrelevant or distracting information (limited capacity)
What is a Visual Search?
- type of measurement for reaction time and accuracy
What is a Feature Search?
- pop out effect (parallel processing)
- looking for one feature
- young and older adults are similar
What is a Conjunction Search?
- serial processing
- the target differs from the distractors in more than one way
How is multitasking (divided attention) impacted with age?
- in general performance suffer, adults more
- more complex leads to more difficulties
- practice effects
How are older adults inhibitory control impacted?
- less inhibitory control (the suppression of goal-irrelevant stimuli)
- ignoring irrelevant information
- increased effect of distracting texted
- increased stroop effect, adults more
- stoop test in which you are told to name the colour of the ink in which a word is printed
What is a sustained attention task?
- Vigilance (state of keeping careful watch for possible danger )
- maintain attention over a long period of time
What are the the two ways our sustained attention change
- Vigilance Performance : older adults less accurate at detecting targets
- Vigilance Decrement: performance deteriorates at the same rate for young and old
Attentional Resources and Aging
- available resources decline
- related to speed theory
- with age, you have greater difficulties with attentional tasks because they have less energy available for cognitive operations
Inhibitory Deficit Hypothesis
- difficulty inhibiting irrelevant information (internal or external) which limits resources for relevant information
- includes internal thoughts and doubts
- But some evidence say compensation is possible
- reduced ability to tune out or ignore irrelevant information with age
How do video games impact young adults?
- improvements in attentional capacity, reaction time, peripheral attention, keeping track of multiple targets
How do video games impact older adults?
- some evidence of benefits
- transfer effects: are improvements from the game transfer to other lab tasks or real life
The older driver
impacted by reaction time, attention, visual systems, physical abilities and medications
What is the Alberta protocol for older adults and driving
- required at age 75 and 80 and then every 2 years after the age of 80
- doctor can recommend a road test
What are the problems facing older drivers
- darker, glare, changes in illumination, reading highway signs, seeing the road, reaching for seatbelt, backing up, changing lanes
(mobility, attention, vision, hearing, ability to detect signs and warnings )
What does it mean to have a Useful Field of View (UFOV)
- key predictor of accidents for older adults, practice can help
- what you can see in your peripheral view, it is considered to be attentional
- important for driving
Should the evaluation of older drivers be cuz of age
- no
- on -road evaluations
- pros and cons
- SIMARD MD: trying to predict crash risk test
What is your working memory?
- limited capacity
- different from short term storage
- impacted by processing speed and attention
- default network deactivated and other areas active when awake
What are the age-related deficits in working memory?
- no age difference in short term memory though there is a deficit in working memory, episodic memory and complex tasks affected
- explanation for “cognitive aging”
Default network in working memory
- active when the brain is at rest
- hippocampus, parts of prefrontal, parietal, temporal and part of the cingulate cortex (visualizing)
- can be seen In PET and FMRI
Why do older adults do worse in working memory ?
- because they don’t deactivate default
What are the divisions of the long term memory
- episodic memory
- semantic memory
- procedural
What is your episodic memory
- memory for events
- things that impact encoding will impact retrieval (attention, speed, WM)
- age differences in memory recall (encoding and retrieval)
What parts of the brain are involved in Episodic Memory
- connections among frontal, temporal and parietal lobes and areas of subcortex
- white matter hyperintensities in the frontal lobe might cause issues
What is the Scaffolding Theory
- alternative neural networks make up for age-related losses
- deal with changes affecting the WM (prefrontal cortex activity increases
- enhanced with exercise and cognitive engagement
What is remote/ autobiographical memory
- information that must be kept for a very long time
- autobiographical memory is memory about information and events from own life
What is the Reminiscence bump?
- the disproportionate number of autobiographical memories in adults over 40 from youth and early adulthood
What makes something memorable
- a lot of rehearsal
- firsts
- central to identity
- Flashbulb memories
What are flashbulb memories?
- big events involving emotion
- amygdala is involved and helps to consolidate the memory
What is Semantic Memory
- general knowledge
- facts
- no real deficits
- more tip of the tongue experiences (TOT)
What are Tip of the Tongue Experiences
- semantic memory
- retrieval induced forgetting
eg. face naming - maybe phonological production related to neural declines
- education may buffer
What is Procedural Memory
- how to do things (riding bike, driving a car)
- no real age-related declines
- experience here could compensate for declines in speed and WM
eg. bridge , soccer
What is your implicit memory
- learning and remembering without awareness
- no real changes
what is source memory
- Implicit memory
- where information came from
What the False Fame Effect
- implicit memory
- increases with age
- more false memories
- more likely to store the “gist” of the story
What is prospective memory
- remembering to do something
what is an event-based task
event triggers action
- prospective memory
- remembering to perform to return a book when driving past library
what is a time-based task
- time triggers action
- prospective memory
What abilities related to memory decline
- episodic memory
- source memory
- false memory
- retrieval failure
- prospective memory
What abilities related to memory that are stable
- semantic memory, flashbulb memory, implicit memory, procedural memory
What is Over-the-hill Identity Accommodation
- impacted by implicit theory about memory and aging
What is Memory Self efficacy
- belief in memory ability
- older adults with lower memory self -efficacy leads to worse on memory tasks
What is Stereotype threat
- older adults are impacted by conforming and believing stereotypes
What is metamemory
- how memory works, memory controllability
- identity accommodation: more likely to believe in inevitable decline
- our self- knowledge and awareness of our own memory processes
Method of Loci Training
increased white matter density and memory improvement
