Comparative Behavioural Changes in Healthy Aging
Heather Kwan, Vanessa Scarapicchia, M.Sc., Jodie Gawryluk, Ph.D.
Accuracy
• There was no significant difference in the congruent
conditions of Younger Adults and Older Adults
• Congruent trials were more accurate than
Incongruent trials across both age groups
Reaction Time
• Younger Adults were significantly faster than Older
Adults
• Congruent trials were significantly faster than
Incongruent trials across both age groups
We would like to thank Stuart McDonald for providing the MSIT
as well as the UVic Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health
References
1. Bush, G., & Shin, L. (2006). The Multi-Source Interference Task: an fMRI task
that reliably activates the cingulo-frontal-parietal cognitive/attention
network. Nature Protocols, 1(1), 308-313. doi: 10.1038/nprot.2006.48
2. Kelly, A., & Halliday, D. (2012). Near Infrared Spectroscopy User Manual
University of Victoria. User Manual, University of Victoria.
Congruent and incongruent examples from the MSIT. (Bush & Shin 2006)
Next Steps: Using NIRS
• Use functional NIRS to look at changes in brain
activity in relation to MSIT
What is NIRS?
• A newer imaging technique
• Uses infrared light to measure blood level
oxygenation and can be used in task based
analysis
Why?
• See if there are specific age-related functional
changes in this task
• Determine the functional changes of healthy
aging
Multi Source Interference Task
• Identify which of 3 numbers is different
• Activate the cingulo-fronto-parietal network for
attention and cognition Bush & Shin (2006)
Introduction
• Cognitive abilities decrease with age, even in
healthy individuals
• As aging increases, we expect a decrease in task
based accuracy and an increase in task based
reaction time
• By understanding changes in cognition, we can
work to prevent or support cognition
Objective: Using the MSIT, determine age-related
changes in heathy adults in accuracy and reaction
time.
Hypothesis: Older Adults will be less accurate and
significantly slower than Younger Adults
Methods
• 17 Older and 17 Younger healthy adults were
recruited through Institute on Aging and Lifelong
Health at Uvic, and community associations
• Data were analyzed using E-Prime
• Statistical t-tests were used to compare the groups
(P<0.05)
Preliminary Conclusions
• The results of accuracy suggest that Older Adults
can maintain their cognitive abilities at lower
level difficulties
• The results of reaction time suggest that motor
and processing speed become slower with age
Results
(Kelly & Halliday, 2012)
Heather Kwan, Department of Psychology | March 4, 2020
This research was supported by the Jamie Cassels Undergraduate
Research Awards, University of Victoria
Supervised by Dr. Jodie Gawryluk, Department of Psychology
