Cognition and Aging Research Lab

The Cognition Lab focuses on the question of why attention and cognition changes as we age.

Our current project examines the role of neural noise as an explanation of the general slowing of cognitive processes as adults age. The theory is that as we age neural circuitry in the brain begins to break down to some degree, and as a result, neural connections may be lost resulting in slower cognitive processing speeds. In two experiments this year we tested this hypothesis by adding external noise (i.e., static) to computer displays in which younger (18-29 years) and older (60+ years) searched for a target item among distractor items. Experiment 1 provided some support for our hypothesis, and in Experiment 2 refinements in our design lead to greater support of the neural noise theory. That is, in Experiment 2 increasing the amount of external noise (i.e., static) lead to greater slowing of target identification times for older adults compared to younger adults.

Our lab has two computers with large LCD displays to run our visual search experiments. We also have E-Prime psychological experiment software for programming the presentation of stimuli and collecting reaction times at the millisecond level. New to the lab this year is an eye-tracking system capable of tracking eye-movements during static displays or video. SAS and SPSS are available for data analysis.

If you are interested in working in our lab or would like to volunteer for an experiment, please contact Prof. Whiting.