Age-dependent changes of auditory evoked potentials--effect of task difficulty.

The goal of this study was to evaluate the patterns of age-dependent changes of P3 components of auditory event-related potentials exploring the effects of task difficulty. The participants (age span: 19-68 years, n=55, divided into five age groups) took part in an easy and in a difficult two-tone oddball frequency discrimination task with speed or accuracy instructions, and in a novelty oddball task. The latency of the P3 components increased with aging. While in the easy task a linear P3b latency increase could be seen, in the difficult tasks (difficult frequency discrimination or distracting novel stimuli) an accelerated latency increase was observed for the P3b and P3a. In the two-tone oddball paradigm age had no effect on P3b amplitude, but in the novelty oddball task the amplitude of P3 potentials decreased with age. These results indicate that distracting stimuli increase task demands, and in difficult tasks decay can be observed more easily due to the accumulation of various processing mechanisms characterizing aging.