Potentially highly relevant but unattended auditory stimuli may result in attention capture. The detection of stimulus change is associated with two event-related potentials: the deviant-related negativity (DRN), whose amplitude varies with the extent of change, and the P3a, which is elicited only by stimuli deemed to be highly relevant. In the present study, younger adults (aged 18-30 years) and older adults (aged 65-73 years) were presented with to-be-ignored auditory stimuli while engaged in a visual task. The auditory stimuli consisted of frequently presented standards and six different rarely presented deviants. In older adults, the amplitude of the DRN varied with the extent of deviance: it was significantly larger to the white noise and environmental sound deviants. A large P3a was elicited by these in younger adults but was much reduced in older adults. The DRN results suggest that older adults are able to compute saliency level of unattended stimulus input at an early stage of processing. However, the attenuated P3a results in older adults suggest that a potentially highly salient stimulus is not given sufficient priority to result in a switch of attention from current cognitive demands.

中文翻译：

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不同类型的听觉变化对年轻人和老年人注意力转移相关过程的影响

潜在高度相关但无人注意的听觉刺激可能会导致注意力捕获。刺激变化的检测与两个事件相关电位有关：异常相关负性 (DRN)，其幅度随变化程度而变化，以及 P3a，它仅由被认为高度相关的刺激引起。在本研究中，年轻的成年人（18-30 岁）和老年人（65-73 岁）在从事视觉任务时会出现被忽略的听觉刺激。听觉刺激包括经常出现的标准和六个不同的很少出现的偏差。在老年人中，DRN 的幅度随着偏差的程度而变化：白噪声和环境声音偏差的幅度明显更大。这些在年轻人中引起了大量的 P3a，但在老年人中大大减少。DRN 结果表明，老年人能够在处理的早期阶段计算无人值守刺激输入的显着性水平。然而，老年人中减弱的 P3a 结果表明，潜在的高度显着的刺激没有得到足够的重视，导致注意力从当前的认知需求转移。