Impaired attentional disengagement in older adults with useful field of view decline.

OBJECTIVES Typical measures of the useful field of view (UFOV) involve many components of attention. The objective of the current research was to examine the attentional operations that might underlie declines in the UFOV. METHOD AND RESULTS We used 2 basic attention tasks to characterize the profile of visual attention in UFOV-impaired and -unimpaired observers. Our results suggested that declines in the UFOV result from a deficit in attentional disengagement, not a decrease in attentional breadth or scope. DISCUSSION The results suggested that UFOV decline in normal aging can be associated with a specific attentional operation, namely attentional disengagement. These results suggest that the underlying cause of UFOV decline may not be a restriction in the breadth or scope of attention. Because the UFOV is a reliable predictor of driving safety, our results point to attentional components that are critical for the visual behavior of older adults.