Reduced distractor filtering with age: Evidence from the distractor positivity ERP

Previous behavioral research has demonstrated that when given positive and negative cues (e.g., attend to blue vs ignore red), young and older adults are able to use this information to a similar extent. However, it is possible that older adults achieve similar behavioral performance via different cognitive and neural mechanisms. The current study aimed to test this question by examining the neural underpinnings of attentional filtering with age. Young and older adults were presented with either positive (target matching), negative (distractor matching), or neutral cues, which were immediately followed by a search array in which participants had to report the orientation of a search target. We found that both age groups appropriately attended to target information when given information about it in the form of a target-matching pre-cue, as indicated by faster response times (RTs) and a significant N2pc event-related potential (ERP) related to increased attentional selection. However, only young adults showed suppression of distractors, as indicated by a significant distractor-positivity (PD) ERP following all three cue types. Older adults did not show significant suppression of distractors in any condition and, they even showed increased attention towards distractors following neutral cues. Thus, although behavioral evidence suggests young and older adults seem to use negative cues similarly, neural evidence suggests that older adults are less able to suppress task-irrelevant information.