Age-related differences in saccadic indices of top-down guidance via short-term memory during visual search

Aging has been associated with significant declines in the speed and accuracy of 3 visual search. These effects have been attributed partly to low-level (bottom-up) factors 4 including reductions in sensory acuity and general processing speed. Aging is also 5 associated with changes in top-down attentional control, but the impact of these on 6 search is less well understood. The current study investigated age-related differences in 7 top-down attentional control by comparing the speed and accuracy of saccadic sampling 8 in the presence and absence of top-down information about target color in young (YA) 9 and older (OA) observers. Displays contained an equal number of red and blue Landholt 10 stimuli. Targets were distinguished from distractors by a unique orientation and 11 observers reported the direction of the target’s gap on each trial. Single-target cues 12 signaled the color of the target with 100% validity. Dual-target cues indicated the target 13 could be present in either colored subgroup. The results revealed reliable group 14 differences in the benefits associated with top-down information on single- compared to 15 dual-target cues. On single-target searches, OA made significantly more saccades than YA 16 to stimuli in the uncued color subset. Single-target cues also produced a smaller 17 advantage in the time taken to fixate the target in OA compared to YA. These results 18 support an age-related decline in observers’ use of top-down information to restrict 19 sequences of saccades to a task-relevant subset of objects during visual search