OTKA K 115457
In our aging society it becomes increasingly important to know how people can maintain their former level of cognitive functions in old age. To answer this question we have to identify which functions are affected in healthy aging and which functions remain unchanged. Impairment of inhibitory functions may adversely affect performance, therefore the planned study will focus on the forms of inhibition and their changing with advancing age. Furthermore, we will show that decreased inhibitory control may have advantages as well: elderly people – compared to young adults – have greater memory for distracting stimuli, and distraction may be beneficial to subsequent performance, when these stimuli become relevant later. Though the elderly may be less effective in comprehending the details, they may be better in seeing the gist, and they may perform better in creative tasks.
Publications related to the project
Gaál, Zs.A., Nagy, B., File, D., Czigler, I. (2020) Older Adults Encode Task-Irrelevant Stimuli, but Can This Side-Effect be Useful to Them? Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Paper: 569614.
Nagy, B., Czigler, I., File, D., Gaál, Zs.A. (2020) Can irrelevant but salient visual cues compensate for the age-related decline in cognitive conflict resolution?—An ERP study. PLoS ONE, Paper: e0233496.
Kojoharova, P., Gaál, Zs.A., Nagy, B., Czigler, I. (2020) Age Effects on Distraction in a Visual Task Requiring Fast Reactions: An Event-Related Potential Study. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. Paper 596047.
Sulykos, I., Gaál, Zs.A., Czigler, I. (2018) Automatic Change Detection in Older and Younger Women: A Visual Mismatch Negativity Study. Gerontology, 64(4), 318-325.
Gaál, Zs.A., Bodnár, F., Czigler, I. (2017) When elderly outperform young adults – Integration in vision revealed by the visual mismatch negativity event-related component. Frontiers in aging Neuroscience, 9, Paper: 15.