Abstract
I will discuss cognitive and neural mechanisms that contribute to VS, how these mechanisms are organized in real time, and how they change across the lifespan. These component processes include the ability to activate representations of search targets (attentional templates), the guidance of attention towards target objects, as well as the subsequent attentional selection of these objects and their encoding into working memory. The efficiency of VS performance changes considerably across the life span. I will discuss findings from search experiment with children, adults, and the elderly, in order to understand which component processes of VS show the most pronounced changes with age. I will focus on the time course of target template activation processes, differences between space-based and feature-based attentional guidance, and the speed with which attention is allocated to search targets.