Experiment 2 provides support for previous assertions that
older adults maintain the ability to process relevant information yet
are more susceptible to the distracting and interfering effects of
irrelevant information (e.g., Cashdollar et al., 2013; Gazzaley et al.,
2005, 2008). Congruent articulatory visual information significantly
increased N1 amplitude in both younger and older adults
compared with auditory processing alone, demonstrating that
older adults are still able to facilitate and enhance the processing of
relevant (visual) information. This adds to the behavioral findings of
Sommers et al. (2005) in which older adults received an equivalent
visual “enhancement” of auditory processing in noise to younger
adults. It should be noted that the interpretation of this increased
N1 as a facilitatory effect, rather than as a marker of inhibitory
deficit, is due to the underlying assumption that the younger adults’
ERPs are the default “healthy” response, that is, because younger
adults show an increase in N1 amplitude in the audiovisual paradigm,
this is the baseline against which to compare.