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Age and novelty: Event‐related brain potentials and autonomic activity
Author(s) -
Weisz Júlia,
Czigler István
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2006.00395.x
Subject(s) - habituation , orienting response , psychology , novelty , skin conductance , audiology , neuroscience , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , social psychology , medicine , biomedical engineering
Our aim was to study age‐related differences in the habituation of orienting reaction by using novel visual stimuli. We intended to fill a gap in habituation research by recording both autonomic and ERP components of orienting to visual stimuli in the same sample and in highly related paradigms. We report data showing that in young subjects repetition of visual novels yielded fast habituation of both skin conductance responses and ERP components (P3 novel , N2b) whereas elderly people displayed no sign of habituation. However, cardiac deceleration—thought conventionally to be part of the orienting reaction—did not habituate in either group. Overall, most of our results harmonize with those obtained by using auditory stimuli; therefore we conclude that there is no significant modality specificity in age‐related deterioration of habituation processes.