Cassavaugh & Kramer

The appearance of an abrupt onset can influence performance in a visual search task. Recently, the additional effect of multiple onset distractors on search performance for a singleton target by young adults was found to be negligible. The present study explored search performance of older adults in a singleton search task requiring eye movements. While overall age-related effects were found in response time (RT) and saccade latency, older adults were not disproportionately affected by the presence of multiple onsets as compared to younger adults in RT, latency, fixation duration, accuracy or proportion of trials on which the eyes were captured by an onset. Neither old nor young adults indicated any awareness of the occurrence of onset distractors.