Elements of attention and concentration in normal aging adults: Locus of decline

One hundred eleven human subjects in good health, aged 5 to 90 years, took the Attention Battery of the Laboratory of Psychology and Psychopathology of the National Institute of Mental Health, and thus provided a set of preliminary norms for the battery. Subjects aged 70 or older demonstrated significant decline in attention skills, primarily on measures highly dependent on speed for successful performance. The most elderly subjects also evidenced difficulty with category concept formation. In contrast to the four attentional elements that Mirsky et al. (in press) identified in the battery, a new 5-component solution best resolved the variance in these data.