Age-related multisensory enhancement in a simple audiovisual detection task.

Abstract

Older adults are known to gain more than younger adults from the simultaneous presentation of semantically congruent sensory stimuli. Although these findings are quite exciting, they may not solely be due to age-related differences in multisensory processing. Rather, enhanced integration may be explained by alterations associated with general cognitive slowing. This study utilized a task that eliminated most high-order cognitive processing. As such, no significant differences in unisensory response times were seen; however, older adults actually showed faster multisensory responses than younger adults. Older adults continued to show significantly greater multisensory enhancement than younger adults. Data support the conclusion that differences in multisensory processing for older adults cannot be explained solely by the effects of general cognitive slowing.