Eye movements reveal age differences in how arousal modulates saliency priority but not attention processing speed

The arousal-biased competition theory posits that inducing arousal increases attentional priority of salient stimuli while reducing priority of non-pertinent stimuli. However, unlike in young adults, older adults rarely exhibit shifts in priority under increased arousal, and prior studies have proposed different neural mechanisms to explain how arousal differentially modulates selective attention in older adults. Therefore, we investigated how the threat of unpredictable shock differentially modulates attentional control mechanisms in young and older adults by observing eye movements. Participants completed two oculomotor search tasks in which the salient distractor was typically captured by attention (singleton search) or proactively suppressed (feature search). We found that arousal did not modulate attentional priority for any stimulus among older adults nor affect the speed of attention processing in either age group. Furthermore, we observed that arousal modulated pupil sizes and found a correlation between evoked pupil responses and oculomotor function. Our findings suggest age differences in how the locus coeruleus-noradrenaline system interacts with neural networks of attention and oculomotor function. Highlights- Increased arousal modulates attention saliency priority but not processing speed - Older adults do not exhibit shifts in stimulus priority under elevated arousal - Proactive suppression of salient stimuli persists even during increased arousal - Threat of unpredictable shock increases pupil sizes and decreases evoked responses - Eye movements may be able to help assess locus coeruleus function