scholarly journals Evidence for an Age-Related Positivity Effect in Metacognitive Confidence Judgments

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 363-364
Author(s):  
Edie Sanders ◽  
Jane Berry
Keyword(s):  
Recognition Memory ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Judgments Of Learning ◽  
Memory Biases ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Older Adulthood ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Memory Monitoring

Abstract We examined age differences in metacognitive monitoring of emotionally-valenced stimuli. If older adults (OAs) are more focused on emotionally meaningful goals in late life (Carstensen, 2006), then they should demonstrate attentional and memory biases for positive stimuli over neutral and negative stimuli and, arguably, these cognitive biases should be reflected in their metacognitive judgments of learning. Judgments of learning (JOLs) for memory of positive, negative, and neutral words were collected. Younger adults (YAs) aged 18-23 years and OAs aged 65-90 years (N = 85) studied words in each valence category and made immediate JOLs, followed by a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) recognition memory task. Analyses of JOLs revealed evidence for a positivity effect (Mather & Carstensen, 2005) in metacognitive confidence for OAs and an emotional salience effect in YAs (Tauber & Dunlosky, 2012; Zimmerman & Kelley, 2010). Predictably, YAs recognized more words than OAs, but valence did not affect number of words recognized and valence did not moderate age differences in recognition memory (p = .055). Memory monitoring as measured by resolution accuracy was equivalent in YAs and OAs (Hertzog & Dunlosky, 2011). Positive affect was higher and negative affect was lower in OAs relative to YAs (Gallant, Spaniol, & Yang, 2019), lending additional evidence to an orientation toward the positive in older adulthood. These results are novel in that they demonstrate an age-related positivity effect that extends beyond the domains of memory and emotion to the domain of metacognitive aging. Discussion will focus on theoretical, methodological, and applied implications.

Evidence for an Age-Related Positivity Effect in Metacognitive Judgments

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edie C Sanders ◽  
Jane M Berry
Keyword(s):  
Age Differences ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Late Life ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Metacognitive Judgments ◽  
Memory Monitoring

Abstract Objectives If older adults (OAs) are focused on emotionally meaningful goals in late life, they should demonstrate memory biases for positive stimuli over neutral and negative stimuli and, arguably, these cognitive biases should be reflected in their metacognitive judgments of learning (JOLs). To address this question, we examined age differences in metacognitive monitoring of emotionally valenced stimuli. Method Younger adults (YAs) and OAs (N = 85) studied positive, neutral, and negative words and made immediate JOLs, followed by a 2-alternative forced choice (2AFC) recognition memory task. Results Analyses of JOLs revealed evidence for a positivity effect in metacognitive judgments for OAs and an emotional salience effect in YAs. YAs recognized more words than OAs, but valence did not affect number of words recognized and did not moderate age differences in memory (p = .055). Memory monitoring as measured by resolution accuracy was equivalent in YAs and OAs. Positive affect was higher and negative affect was lower in OAs relative to YAs, lending additional evidence to the emergence of a positive orientation in older adulthood. Discussion These results provide intriguing and novel support for the positivity effect in the domain of metacognitive aging, adding to what is known in memory, attention, and emotion domains. Our findings fall squarely within socioemotional and metacognitive theoretical frameworks from which they were derived. We discuss research directions that might identify mechanisms by which affective states and stimuli interact to produce metacognitive outcomes in late life.

scholarly journals Adult age differences in subjective responses to dynamic socioemotional incentives

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sade J Abiodun ◽  
Galen McAllister ◽  
Gregory Russell Samanez-Larkin ◽  
Kendra Leigh Seaman
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Incentive Motivation ◽  
Social Signals ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Adult Age ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Adult Age Differences

Facial expressions are powerful communicative social signals that motivate feelings and action in the observer. However, research on incentive motivation has overwhelmingly focused on money and points and the limited research on social incentives has been mostly focused on responses in young adulthood. Previous research on the age-related positivity effect and adult age differences in social motivation suggest that older adults might experience higher levels of positive arousal to socioemotional stimuli than younger adults. Affect ratings following dynamic emotional expressions (anger, happiness, sadness) varying in magnitude of expression showed that higher magnitude expressions elicited higher arousal and valence ratings. Older adults did not differ significantly in levels of arousal when compared to younger adults, however their ratings of emotional valence were significantly higher as the magnitude of expressions increased. The findings provide novel evidence that socioemotional incentives may be relatively more reinforcing as adults age. More generally, these dynamic socioemotional stimuli that vary in magnitude are ideal for future studies of more naturalistic affect elicitation, studies of social incentive processing, and use in incentive-driven choice tasks.

Examining Positivity Effect and Working Memory in Young-Old and Very Old Adults Using EEG-Derived Cognitive State Metrics

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (10) ◽  
pp. 1014-1035
Author(s):  
Joelle C. Ruthig ◽  
Dmitri P. Poltavski ◽  
Thomas Petros
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Cognitive State ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Very Old ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Old Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Young Old

The positivity effect among older adults is a tendency to process more positive and/or less negative emotional stimuli compared to younger adults, with unknown upper age boundaries. Cognitive and emotional working memory were assessed in young-old adults (60–75) and very old adults (VOAs; 80+) to determine whether emotional working memory declines similar to the age-related decline of cognitive working memory. The moderating role of valence on the link between age and emotional working memory was examined to identify change in positivity effect with advanced age. Electroencephalography (EEG) markers of cognitive workload and engagement were obtained to test the theory of cognitive resource allocation in older adults’ emotional stimuli processing. EEG recordings were collected during cognitive memory task and emotional working memory tasks that required rating emotional intensity of images pairs. Results indicate a positivity effect among VOAs that does not require additional cognitive effort and is not likely to diminish with age.

scholarly journals Inhibitory control and its relationship to positivity biases in older adults

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caoimhe McManus ◽  
David McGovern
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Recognition Memory ◽  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Negative Information ◽  
Socioemotional Selectivity Theory ◽  
Positive Information ◽  
Active Suppression ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Socioemotional Selectivity ◽  
Age Related

Older adults tend to focus on positive information over negative information; a phenomenon commonly referred to as the ‘positivity effect’. Socioemotional Selectivity Theory posits that this effect stems from age-related shifts in goals and relies heavily on the active suppression of negative information. The current study tested the hypothesis that inhibitory control is a key determinant of positivity biases in older adults using anti-saccade and recognition memory tasks. Results indicated a significant correlation between levels of inhibitory control and the positivity effect. These findings highlight the key role played by inhibitory control in determining positivity biases amongst older adults.

Age Differences in Acoustic and Semantic Recognition Memory

1980 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 439-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew C. Coyne ◽  
James F. Herman ◽  
Jack Botwinick
Keyword(s):  
Recognition Memory ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Recognition Memory Task ◽  
Age Difference ◽  
Information Encoding ◽  
Semantic Encoding ◽  
Age Range

Patterns of information encoding were examined across a wide age range of subjects. Subjects aged 8-, 10-, 24-, 66-, and 75-yr. were administered a recognition memory task involving both acoustically and semantically related distractor words. The errors and latencies indicated no age-difference in encoding patterns. A comparison of errors for 8-, 10-, and 24-yr.-olds alone, however, indicated a shift from acoustic to semantic encoding style between the ages of 8 and 10.

scholarly journals Response bias and aging on a recognition memory task

2006 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
TERRI J. HUH ◽  
JOEL H. KRAMER ◽  
ADAM GAZZALEY ◽  
DEAN C. DELIS
Keyword(s):  
Recognition Memory ◽  
Frontal Lobe ◽  
Response Bias ◽  
Verbal Learning ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Underlying Mechanism ◽  
California Verbal Learning Test ◽  
Cognitive Changes ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Mediate Response

Response bias reflects the decision rule an individual uses when faced with uncertainty on recognition memory tasks. Recent studies indicate frontal regions may mediate response bias performance. One theory of aging also implicates frontal lobe contributions in age-related cognitive changes. This suggests that frontal lobe changes may mediate response bias in older adults. Consistent with this frontal aging hypothesis, we predicted that response bias would become more liberal with age. Methods: Participants were 181 younger (30–49) and 112 older normal adults (75+) that were part of the California Verbal Learning Test-second edition (CVLT-2) normative sample (total n = 1078). We used parametric measures of discriminability and response bias provided by the CVLT-2 scoring program. Groups were similar in IQ and education. Multi-level regression models were created to examine the effects of moderating variables. The interaction between age and age group significantly predicted response bias. Post hoc analysis indicated that increasing age was associated with more liberal bias in the older but not in the younger group. In the light of reported relationships between frontal regions and both aging and response bias, we hypothesize that frontal changes may be the underlying mechanism explaining the increase in liberal response bias with age. (JINS, 2006, 12, 1–7.)

scholarly journals Recognition Memory Shielded from Semantic but not Perceptual Interference in Normal Aging

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Merika Wilson ◽  
Kevin Potter ◽  
Rosemary Cowell
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Recognition Memory ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Memory Loss ◽  
Normal Aging ◽  
Related Word ◽  
Category Size ◽  
Perceptual Features ◽  
Perceptual Interference ◽  
Age Related

Normal aging impairs long-term declarative memory, and evidence suggests that this impairment may be driven partly by structural or functional changes in the medial temporal lobe (MTL). Theories of MTL memory function therefore make predictions for age-related memory loss. One theory – the Representational-Hierarchical account – makes two specific predictions. First, recognition memory in older participants should be impaired by feature-level interference, in which studied items contain many shared perceptual features such that those features appear repeatedly. Second, if the interference in a recognition memory task – i.e., the information that repeats across items – resides at a higher level of complexity than simple perceptual features, such as semantic gist, older adults should be less impacted by such interference than young adults. We tested these predictions using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm, by creating feature-level (i.e., perceptual) interference with phonemically/orthographically related word categories, and higher-level associative interference with semantically related word categories. Importantly, we manipulated category size in order to compare the effect of less versus more interference (i.e., small versus large category size), which served to (1) avoid potential item confounds arising from systematic differences between words belonging to perceptually- versus semantically-related categories, and (2) ensure that any effect of interference was due to information encoded at study, rather than pre-experimentally. Further, we used signal detection theory to interpret our data, rather than examining false alarm rates in isolation, thereby avoiding potentially confounding contamination of the memory measure by changes in response bias across conditions or groups. Older participants, relative to young adults, were relatively more impaired by perceptual interference and less impaired by semantic interference. This pattern seems at odds with many current theories of age-related memory loss, but is in line with the Representational-Hierarchical account.

Learning From (Test) Experience

2020 ◽  
Vol 228 (4) ◽  
pp. 264-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan E. Mitton ◽  
Chris M. Fiacconi
Keyword(s):  
Recognition Memory ◽  
Test Performance ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Judgments Of Learning ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Memory Tests ◽  
Recognition Memory Performance ◽  
Study Test ◽  
Explicit Feedback

Abstract. To date there has been relatively little research within the domain of metamemory that examines how individuals monitor their performance during memory tests, and whether the outcome of such monitoring informs subsequent memory predictions for novel items. In the current study, we sought to determine whether spontaneous monitoring of test performance can in fact help individuals better appreciate their memory abilities, and in turn shape future judgments of learning (JOLs). Specifically, in two experiments we examined recognition memory for visual images across three study-test cycles, each of which contained novel images. We found that across cycles, participants’ JOLs did in fact increase, reflecting metacognitive sensitivity to near-perfect levels of recognition memory performance. This finding suggests that individuals can and do monitor their test performance in the absence of explicit feedback, and further underscores the important role that test experience can play in shaping metacognitive evaluations of learning and remembering.

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