Linking cognitive and visual perceptual decline in healthy aging: The information degradation hypothesis.
Abstract
Several hypotheses attempt to explain the relation between cognitive and perceptual
decline in aging (e.g., common-cause, sensory deprivation, cognitive load on perception,
information degradation). Unfortunately, the majority of past studies examining this
association have used correlational analyses, not allowing for these hypotheses to
be tested sufficiently. This correlational issue is especially relevant for the information
degradation hypothesis, which states that degraded perceptual signal inputs, resulting
from either age-related neurobiological processes (e.g., retinal degeneration) or
experimental manipulations (e.g., reduced visual contrast), lead to errors in perceptual
processing, which in turn may affect non-perceptual, higher-order cognitive processes.
Even though the majority of studies examining the relation between age-related cognitive
and perceptual decline have been correlational, we reviewed several studies demonstrating
that visual manipulations affect both younger and older adults' cognitive performance,
supporting the information degradation hypothesis and contradicting implications of
other hypotheses (e.g., common-cause, sensory deprivation, cognitive load on perception).
The reviewed evidence indicates the necessity to further examine the information degradation
hypothesis in order to identify mechanisms underlying age-related cognitive decline.
Type
Journal articleSubject
AgingCognition
Information degradation
Perception
Vision
Visual perception
Aging
Cognition
Humans
Visual Perception
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/15956Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.07.031Publication Info
Monge, Zachary A; & Madden, David J (2016). Linking cognitive and visual perceptual decline in healthy aging: The information
degradation hypothesis. Neurosci Biobehav Rev, 69. pp. 166-173. 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.07.031. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/15956.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
David Joseph Madden
Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
My research focuses primarily on the cognitive neuroscience of aging: the investigation
of age-related changes in perception, attention, and memory, using both behavioral
measures and neuroimaging techniques, including positron emission tomography (PET),
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI).
The behavioral measures have focused on reaction time, with the goal of distinguishing
age-related changes in specific cognitive abilities from mo
Zachary Monge
Research Assistant, Ph D Student
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