The role of age, cognitive functioning and gender on the “attentional activity rate”

The attentional response times influence the capacity to manage cognitive and behavioral activities. This study investigated the agerelated changes of the “attentional activity rate”, i.e., the speed of the attentional responses in elderly adults. The role of cognitive functioning and gender were also analysed. Participants were 240 old adults aged from 65 to 85 years. The response times during the execution of tasks measuring “selective attention”, “focused attention”, “divided attention” and “alternating attention” were evaluated. Results showed a decreasing of the speed of the attentional responses with increasing age. The age-related changes of the “attentional activity rate” did not involve all aspects of attention, and presented different characteristics in males and females. Interestingly, the level of cognitive functioning did not directly contribute to the speed of execution of attentional tasks when divided and selective attention were involved. Considering that the speed 1 Department of Educational Sciences, University of Catania. E-mail: [email protected]. Phone: +390952508025 The author reports no declaration of interest. Ethical approval: All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Received: August 26, 2015; Revised: March 21, 2016; Accepted: June 10, 2016 © 2016 Associazione Oasi Maria SS. IRCCS Life Span and Disability Commodari E. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 22 at which a mental activity is executed contributes to determine patterns of mental inefficiency in the old adults, the findings of the presents studies could be relevant for the developmental, clinical and experimental fields.