Abstract
The ability to process information and retain in the episodic buffer for a short period is indispensable for performing everyday activities. The capacity of this buffer is limited and individual, however, can be enhanced.
As one gets older, the capacity to process information decreases. One of the reasons is the decreased ability to inhibit irrelevant information and focus on the important successfully.
Selective attention or so-called distractor filtering efficiency thus determines our working memory (WM) and to a great extent co-determines its content. Persons with greater WM capacity more successfully inhibit irrelevant information than people with low WM capacity.
Distractor filtering efficiency and the WM capacity can be examined with the "Change Detection Task" (CDT), which is also used as a training task in research. The task is to identify whether the set of stimuli is identical to a set that was presented just previously.
Thus it gives many possibilities to design the task and to choose adaptive aspects (a type of stimuli, number of stimuli, presentation/retention time, etc.). Research studies have suggested that training of selective attention has an impact on the WM capacity and decision-making ability.
However, they have focused only on younger adults, and the extent to which this training is effective in older adults yet needs to be researched. For this purpose, we have developed an application "FILTER IT" for tablets (OS Android).
The main aim of our poster is to present our adaptation of CDT for tablets. The application can be used for assessment or training and has four parts (Instructions, Trial mode, Training, Results).
Our CDT consists of three paradigms (change detection in color, orientation, and shape). The task is to focus on the target visual information (stimuli on the cued side indicated by arrow) in the presence of irrelevant information (items located on opposite side) in a display set.
Following a short retention interval (900 ms) participants are asked to determine whether the stimuli on the cued side of new display set have changed or not. Each paradigm consists of 7 sequences, and one sequence has 20 trials.
The efficiency is evaluated after every sequence and based on it the number of stimuli presented (from 2 to 7 stimuli on each side of the screen) is changed or remained. Thus the task for training and assessment is adaptive.
The application FILTER IT will be described in detail in the poster.