The effects of age on channel capacity for absolute identification of tonal duration

Abstract

We compared the ability of younger and older adults to identify which 2-kHz tones of eight varying durations was presented on a trial with their ability to discriminate between adjacent pairs of duration-varying tones drawn from the same set. We used signal detection analyses to construct scales of perceived duration for both tasks. Scales derived from pairwise comparisons of adjacent durations were related linearly to the logarithm of stimulus duration; these were essentially identical in younger and older adults. However, scales derived from the eight-alternative absolute identification experiments, which were also linearly related to the logarithm of duration, indicated that older adults outperformed younger adults on this task. These results suggest that the ability to process large numbers of stimuli that differ only in duration is at least as good, if not better, in older than in younger adults, relative to the ability of each group to discriminate between two stimuli differing only in duration. © 2010 The Psychonomic Society, Inc.