Simultaneous examination of age related differences in the ability to maintain and reorient auditory selective attention.

The present investigation simultaneously examined age-related differences in the ability to maintain and reorient auditory selective attention. The maintenance and reorientation components of attention were assessed by means of an auditory listening task involving 24 dichotic trails. The trails were counter-balanced for right-ear and left-ear relevance, with each trail involving two parts. The first part required maintenance of attention and second part required a reorientation of attention. The participants for the study were 90 community-living women recruited to represent an age continuum of young adult, adult, and older adult. It was hypothesized that there would be a significant decrement in both maintenance and reorientation of attention with increasing age, and that reorientation of attention would be more difficult than maintenance of attention, particularly for older adults. The results of multivariate and univariate analyses confirmed the hypotheses and suggested that an inability to reorient attention, coupled with a tendency for right-ear set, was primarily responsible for the manifest differences in selective attention ability of older adults. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical implications and the relationship of the findings with previous research.