Auditory environment, cognitive control, and ageing：

Examination with visuo-spatial tasks

Abstract

In recent years, it is widely accepted that cognitive aging is mainly caused by the decline of cognitive control functions. In order to show the relationship between cognitive aging and an everyday dual-task situation, listening something at work, we executed an experiment with a visuo-spatial cognitive task, the N-back task of 3x3 matrix. Participants were asked to respond to a target letter or letter position. Results showed that, in the task targeting the letter position, the response time under the control condition was slower than other three conditions with noise-canceling headphone (headphone only, music presentation, and soundscape presentation conditions), and the effect was larger in younger adults. The effects of noise cancelling on cognitive control, particularly on visuo-spatial tasks, and those relation with ageing will be discussed.