scholarly journals Cognitive and motor perseveration are associated in older adults

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carly Sombric ◽  
Gelsy Torres-Oviedo
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Motor Task ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
List Type ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
Matching Rules

AbstractAging causes perseveration (difficulty to switch between actions) in motor and cognitive tasks, suggesting that the same neural processes could govern these abilities in older adults. To test this, we evaluated the relation between independently measured motor and cognitive perseveration in young (21.4±3.7 y/o) and older participants (76.5±2.9 y/o). Motor perseveration was measured with a locomotor task in which participants had to transition between distinct walking patterns. Cognitive perseveration was measured with a card matching task in which participants had to switch between distinct matching rules. We found that perseveration in the cognitive and motor domains were positively related in older, but not younger individuals, such that participants exhibiting greater perseveration in the motor task also perseverated more in the cognitive task. Additionally, exposure reduces motor perseveration: older adults who had practiced the motor task could transition between walking patterns as proficiently as naïve, young individuals. Our results suggest an overlap in neural processes governing cognitive and motor perseveration with aging and that exposure can counteract the age-related motor perseveration.HighlightsMovement carryover from the treadmill to overground indicates motor perseveration.Greater motor and cognitive perseveration are associated in older adults.Motor perseveration in older adults can be reduced with practice.New motor memories are similarly forgotten in older and younger adults.

scholarly journals Cognitive and Motor Perseveration Are Associated in Older Adults

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carly J. Sombric ◽  
Gelsy Torres-Oviedo
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Motor Task ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
Matching Rules

Aging causes perseveration (difficulty to switch between actions) in motor and cognitive tasks, suggesting that the same neural processes could govern these abilities in older adults. To test this, we evaluated the relation between independently measured motor and cognitive perseveration in young (21.4 ± 3.7 y/o) and older participants (76.5 ± 2.9 y/o). Motor perseveration was measured with a locomotor task in which participants had to transition between distinct walking patterns. Cognitive perseveration was measured with a card matching task in which participants had to switch between distinct matching rules. We found that perseveration in the cognitive and motor domains were positively related in older, but not younger individuals, such that participants exhibiting greater perseveration in the motor task also perseverated more in the cognitive task. Additionally, exposure reduces motor perseveration: older adults who had practiced the motor task could transition between walking patterns as proficiently as naïve, young individuals. Our results suggest an overlap in neural processes governing cognitive and motor perseveration with aging and that exposure can counteract the age-related motor perseveration.

Age-Related Differences in Motivational Integration and Cognitive Control

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debbie Marianne Yee ◽  
Sarah L Adams ◽  
Asad Beck ◽  
Todd Samuel Braver
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Monetary Reward ◽  
Potential Candidate ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Cognitive Task Performance

Motivational incentives play an influential role in value-based decision-making and cognitive control. A compelling hypothesis in the literature suggests that the brain integrates the motivational value of diverse incentives (e.g., motivational integration) into a common currency value signal that influences decision-making and behavior. To investigate whether motivational integration processes change during healthy aging, we tested older (N=44) and younger (N=54) adults in an innovative incentive integration task paradigm that establishes dissociable and additive effects of liquid (e.g., juice, neutral, saltwater) and monetary incentives on cognitive task performance. The results reveal that motivational incentives improve cognitive task performance in both older and younger adults, providing novel evidence demonstrating that age-related cognitive control deficits can be ameliorated with sufficient incentive motivation. Additional analyses revealed clear age-related differences in motivational integration. Younger adult task performance was modulated by both monetary and liquid incentives, whereas monetary reward effects were more gradual in older adults and more strongly impacted by trial-by-trial performance feedback. A surprising discovery was that older adults shifted attention from liquid valence toward monetary reward throughout task performance, but younger adults shifted attention from monetary reward toward integrating both monetary reward and liquid valence by the end of the task, suggesting differential strategic utilization of incentives. Together these data suggest that older adults may have impairments in incentive integration, and employ different motivational strategies to improve cognitive task performance. The findings suggest potential candidate neural mechanisms that may serve as the locus of age-related change, providing targets for future cognitive neuroscience investigations.

scholarly journals The effect of age on postural and cognitive task performance while using vibrotactile feedback

2015 ◽  
Vol 113 (7) ◽  
pp. 2127-2136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chia-Cheng Lin ◽  
Susan L. Whitney ◽  
Patrick J. Loughlin ◽  
Joseph M. Furman ◽  
Mark S. Redfern ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Performance ◽  
Center Of Pressure ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Balance Performance ◽  
Vibrotactile Feedback ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Trunk Tilt ◽  
Effect Of Age

Vibrotactile feedback (VTF) has been shown to improve balance performance in healthy people and people with vestibular disorders in a single-task experimental condition. It is unclear how age-related changes in balance affect the ability to use VTF and if there are different attentional requirements for old and young adults when using VTF. Twenty younger and 20 older subjects participated in this two-visit study to examine the effect of age, VTF, sensory condition, cognitive task, duration of time, and visit on postural and cognitive performance. Postural performance outcome measures included root mean square of center of pressure (COP) and trunk tilt, and cognitive performance was assessed using the reaction time (RT) from an auditory choice RT task. The results showed that compared with younger adults, older adults had an increase in COP in fixed platform conditions when using VTF, although they were able to reduce COP during sway-referenced platform conditions. Older adults also did not benefit fully from using VTF in their first session. The RTs for the secondary cognitive tasks increased significantly while using the VTF in both younger and older adults. Older adults had a larger increase compared with younger adults, suggesting that greater attentional demands were required in older adults when using VTF information. Future training protocols for VTF should take into consideration the effect of aging.

scholarly journals THE EFFECT OF COGNITIVE TESTING ON STATE ANXIETY AND CORTISOL REACTIVITY IN YOUNGER AND OLDER ADULTS

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S708-S708
Author(s):  
MacKenzie L Hughes ◽  
Ann Pearman ◽  
Shevaun D Neupert
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
State Anxiety ◽  
Declarative Memory ◽  
Cognitive Testing ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Testing Session ◽  
Significant Interaction Effect ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Cortisol Reactivity ◽  
Age Related

Abstract Although it is well established that stress is negatively associated with cognitive functioning, less is known about age differences in the effects of stressors and anxiety on state anxiety and physiological reactivity (i.e., changes in cortisol). The current study examined state anxiety and cortisol reactivity during a series of cognitive tasks in a sample of younger (n=26) and older (n=29) adults. Participants completed the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory prior to cognitive testing and provided six salivary cortisol samples throughout one testing session: two cortisol samples prior to cognitive testing, three samples during testing, and one sample after testing. Six cognitive tasks were administered that measured attention span, declarative memory, and processing speed. Results indicated a significant interaction effect of age by time with younger adults’ cortisol linearly decreasing during the testing session and older adults’ cortisol showing a quadratic trend. A second interaction was found between age and state anxiety whereby older adults who reported more anxiety had higher cortisol levels during the cognitive testing session than both the older adults who reported low levels of anxiety and the younger adults. Only age (not cortisol or anxiety) was significantly related to cognitive performance. Results from this study suggest that standard cognitive testing could be anxiety producing for older adults, particularly for those who are already anxious. Future investigations should examine age-related differences in the processes linking anxiety and cortisol to specific types of performance, such as memory and attention.

Internet Navigation Skills for Financial Management: Associations with Age, Neurocognitive Performance, and Functional Capacity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samina Rahman ◽  
Victoria Kordovski ◽  
Savanna Tierney ◽  
Steven Paul Woods
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Functional Capacity ◽  
Financial Management ◽  
Internet Banking ◽  
Online Banking ◽  
Neurocognitive Performance ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Neurocognitive Functions ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Use Factors

Objective: Online banking is becoming increasingly common among older adults, whomay experience difficulties effectively navigating this instrumental technology. Thisstudy examined age effects on a performance-based Internet banking task and itsassociation with neurocognitive ability and functional capacity in older and youngeradults. Method: Thirty-five older adults and 50 younger adults completed anexperimenter-controlled online banking measure in which they independentlyperformed a series of naturalistic financial tasks (e.g., account transfers, bill paying).Participants also completed a standardized battery of neuropsychological tests andmeasures of functional capacity. Results: Older adults were markedly slower and lessaccurate in completing the Internet-based banking task, which was not confounded byother demographic, mood, or computer use factors. Higher scores on measures ofneurocognition and financial functional capacity were both strongly associated withhigher Internet-based banking task accuracy scores and quicker completion times inthe older, but not the younger adults. Conclusions: Findings suggest that older adultsexperience difficultly quickly and accurately navigating online banking platforms, whichmay be partly related to age-related declines in neurocognitive functions and basicfinancial capacity. Future studies might examine whether neurocognitive approaches toremediation and compensation can be used to improve online banking capacity inolder adults.

scholarly journals Positive Emodiversity Buffers the Association Between Stress and Depressive Symptoms

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 653-653
Author(s):  
Lizbeth Benson ◽  
Anthony Ong
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Depressive Symptoms ◽  
Life Span ◽  
Daily Diary ◽  
National Study ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Shannon's Entropy ◽  
Daily Experiences ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Optimal Functioning

Abstract Intensive measurements of individuals’ experiences allow for identifying patterns of functioning that may be markers of resilience, and whether such patterns differ across the life span. Using 8 daily diary reports collected in the second burst of the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE, n=848, age 34-84; 55%female), we examined whether positive emodiversity (Shannon’s entropy) attenuated the association between cumulative stressor exposure and depressive symptoms, and age-related differences therein. Results indicated age moderated the extent to which positive emodiversity attenuated the association between stress and depressive symptoms (b=0.11, p < .05). The attenuated association was strongest for younger adults with higher positive emodiversity, compared to those with lower positive emodiversity. For older adults, the association between stress and depressive symptoms was relatively similar regardless of their positive emodiversity. Implications pertain to for whom and in what contexts specific types of dynamic emotion experiences may promote optimal functioning and resilience.

Age Differences in the Social Associative Learning of Trust Information

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendra Leigh Seaman ◽  
Alexander P. Christensen ◽  
Katherine Senn ◽  
Jessica Cooper ◽  
Brittany Shane Cassidy
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Trust Game ◽  
Time Model ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Cortical Areas ◽  
Age Related ◽  
The Social ◽  
Over Time

Trust is a key component of social interaction. Older adults, however, often exhibit excessive trust relative to younger adults. One explanation is that older adults may learn to trust differently than younger adults. Here, we examine how younger (N=33) and older adults (N=30) learn to trust over time. Participants completed a classic iterative trust game with three partners. Younger and older adults shared similar amounts but differed in how they shared money. Compared to younger adults, older adults invested more with untrustworthy partners and less with trustworthy partners. As a group, older adults displayed less learning than younger adults. However, computational modeling shows that this is because older adults are more likely to forget what they have learned over time. Model-based fMRI analyses revealed several age-related differences in neural processing. Younger adults showed prediction error signals in social processing areas while older adults showed over-recruitment of several cortical areas. Collectively, these findings suggest that older adults attend to and learn from social cues differently from younger adults.

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.

scholarly journals Dissociating refreshing and elaboration and their impacts on memory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lea M. Bartsch ◽  
Vanessa M. Loaiza ◽  
Lutz Jäncke ◽  
Klaus Oberauer ◽  
Jarrod A. Lewis-Peacock
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Ethics Committees ◽  
Fmri Data ◽  
Ethical Review ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
List Type ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Age Related

AbstractMaintenance of information in working memory (WM) is assumed to rely on refreshing and elaboration, but clear mechanistic descriptions of these cognitive processes are lacking, and it is unclear whether they are simply two labels for the same process. This fMRI study investigated the extent to which refreshing, elaboration, and repeating of items in WM are distinct neural processes with dissociable behavioral outcomes in WM and long-term memory (LTM). Multivariate pattern analyses of fMRI data revealed differentiable neural signatures for these processes, which we also replicated in an independent sample of older adults. In some cases, the degree of neural separation within an individual predicted their memory performance. Elaboration improved LTM, but not WM, and this benefit increased as its neural signature became more distinct from repetition. Refreshing had no impact on LTM, but did improve WM, although the neural discrimination of this process was not predictive of the degree of improvement. These results demonstrate that refreshing and elaboration are separate processes that differently contribute to memory performance.HighlightsRepeated reading, refreshing, and elaboration are differentiable in brain activation patterns in both young and older adults.Elaboration selectively improved long-term memory for young adults, and the size of the benefit was related to the neural separability of elaboration from other processes.Older adults implemented a sub-optimal form of elaboration, and this may be a factor contributing to age-related deficits in long-term memory.Ethics statementThe study was approved by the ethical review board of the canton of Zurich (BASEC-No. 2017-00190) and all subjects gave informed written consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.Data and code availability statementAll behavioral data and analysis scripts can be assessed on the Open Science Framework (osf.io/p2h8b/). The fMRI data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author, LMB. The fMRI data are not publicly available due to restrictions of the Swiss Ethics Committees on research involving humans regarding data containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

scholarly journals Structural differences in the semantic networks of younger and older adults

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk U. Wulff ◽  
Thomas Hills ◽  
Rui Mata
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Modeling ◽  
Semantic Network ◽  
Semantic Networks ◽  
Edge Weight ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Weight Distributions ◽  
Path Lengths ◽  
First Time

Cognitive science invokes semantic networks to explain diverse phenomena from reasoning to memory retrieval and creativity. While diverse approaches are available, researchers commonly assume a single underlying semantic network that is shared across individuals. Yet, semantic networks are considered the product of experience implying that individuals who make different experiences should possess different semantic networks. By studying differences between younger and older adults, we demonstrate that this is the case. Using a network analytic approach and diverse empirical data, we present converging evidence of age-related differences in semantic networks of groups and, for the first time, individuals. Specifically, semantic networks of older adults exhibited larger degrees, less clustering, and longer path lengths. Furthermore, the edge weight distributions of older adults individual networks exhibited significantly more skew and higher entropy across node pairs and, except for unrelated node pairs, less inter-individual agreement, suggesting that older adults networks are generally more distinct than younger adults networks. Our results challenge the common conception of a single semantic network shared by individuals and highlight the importance of individual differences in cognitive modeling. They also present valuable benchmarks to discern between theories of age-related changes in cognitive performance.

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