scholarly journals Sources of Cognitive Conflict and Their Relevance to Theory-of-Mind Proficiency in Healthy Aging: A Preregistered Study

2021 ◽  
pp. 095679762110178
Author(s):  
Foyzul Rahman ◽  
Klaus Kessler ◽  
Ian A. Apperly ◽  
Peter C. Hansen ◽  
Sabrina Javed ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Spatial Working Memory ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Response Speed ◽  
Cognitive Conflict ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Outcome Knowledge

Age-related decline in theory of mind (ToM) may be due to waning executive control, which is necessary for resolving conflict when reasoning about other individuals’ mental states. We assessed how older ( n = 50) and younger ( n = 50) adults were affected by three theoretically relevant sources of conflict within ToM: competing self-other perspectives, competing cued locations, and outcome knowledge. We examined which best accounted for age-related difficulty with ToM. Our data show unexpected similarity between age groups when people are representing a belief incongruent with their own. Individual differences in attention and response speed best explained the degree of conflict experienced through incompatible self-other perspectives. However, older adults were disproportionately affected by managing conflict between cued locations. Age and spatial working memory were most relevant for predicting the magnitude of conflict elicited by conflicting cued locations. We suggest that previous studies may have underestimated older adults’ ToM proficiency by including unnecessary conflict in ToM tasks.

Sources of cognitive conflict and their relevance to Theory of Mind proficiency in healthy ageing. A preregistered study.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Foyzul Rahman ◽  
Sabrina Javed ◽  
Ian Apperly ◽  
Peter Hansen ◽  
Carol Holland ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Executive Control ◽  
Spatial Working Memory ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Response Speed ◽  
Cognitive Conflict ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Outcome Knowledge

Age-related decline in Theory of Mind (ToM) may be due to waning executive control, which is necessary for resolving conflict when reasoning about others’ mental states. We assessed how older (OA; n=50) versus younger adults (YA; n=50) were affected by three theoretically relevant sources of conflict within ToM: competing Self-Other perspectives; competing cued locations and outcome knowledge. We examined which best accounted for age-related difficulty with ToM. Our data show unexpected similarity between age groups when representing a belief incongruent with one’s own. Individual differences in attention and motor response speed best explained the degree of conflict experienced through conflicting Self-Other perspectives. However, OAs were disproportionately affected by managing conflict between cued locations. Age and spatial working memory were most relevant for predicting the magnitude of conflict elicited by conflicting cued locations. We suggest that previous studies may have underestimated OA’s ToM proficiency by including unnecessary conflict in ToM tasks.

scholarly journals Assessing the Transferability of Physical Activity Type Detection Models: Influence of Age Group Is Underappreciated

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hoda Allahbakhshi ◽  
Christina Röcke ◽  
Robert Weibel
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Training Data ◽  
Behavioral Differences ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Level Walking ◽  
Age Related

Increasing the amount of physical activity (PA) in older adults that have shifted to a sedentary lifestyle is a determining factor in decreasing health and social costs. It is, therefore, imperative to develop objective methods that accurately detect daily PA types and provide detailed PA guidance for healthy aging. Most of the existing techniques have been applied in the younger generation or validated in the laboratory. To what extent, these methods are transferable to real-life and older adults are a question that this paper aims to answer. Sixty-three participants, including 33 younger and 30 older healthy adults, participated in our study. Each participant wore five devices mounted on the left and right hips, right knee, chest, and left pocket and collected accelerometer and GPS data in both semi-structured and real-life environments. Using this dataset, we developed machine-learning models to detect PA types walking, non-level walking, jogging/running, sitting, standing, and lying. Besides, we examined the accuracy of the models within-and between-age groups applying different scenarios and validation approaches. The within-age models showed convincing classification results. The findings indicate that due to age-related behavioral differences, there are more confusion errors between walking, non-level walking, and running in older adults’ results. Using semi-structured training data, the younger adults’ models outperformed older adults’ models. However, using real-life training data alone or in combination with semi-structured data generated better results for older adults who had high real-life data quality. Assessing the transferability of the models to older adults showed that the models trained with younger adults’ data were only weakly transferable. However, training the models with a combined dataset of both age groups led to reliable transferability of results to the data of the older subgroup. We show that age-related behavioral differences can alter the PA classification performance. We demonstrate that PA type detection models that rely on combined datasets of young and older adults are strongly transferable to real-life and older adults’ data. Our results yield significant time and cost savings for future PA studies by reducing the overall volume of training data required.

Naming in Older Adults: Complementary Auditory and Visual Assessment

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Marla J. Hamberger ◽  
Nahal Heydari ◽  
Elise Caccappolo ◽  
William T. Seidel
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Normative Data ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Performance Measure ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Common Symptom ◽  
Current Standard ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Naming Test

Abstract Objectives: Naming difficulty is a common symptom of multiple age-related neurodegenerative disorders. As naming difficulty increases with age, valid, up-to-date naming assessment tools are crucial for differentiating between neurotypical changes in healthy aging and pathological naming difficulty. We aimed to develop and provide normative data for complementary auditory description naming and visual naming tests for older adults. Furthermore, these measures would include not only untimed accuracy, typically the sole naming performance measure, but also additional scores that incorporate features characteristic of actual word finding difficulty. Methods: A normative sample of 407 healthy older adults, aged 56–100 years, were administered the Auditory Naming Test (ANT) and Visual Naming Test (VNT), and other standardized measures. Results: Item analyses resulted in 36 stimuli for both tests. Age-stratified, education-based normative data are provided for accuracy, response time, tip-of-the-tongue (i.e., delayed, yet accurate responses plus correct responses following phonemic cueing), and multiple Summary Scores. Internal and test–retest reliability coefficients were reasonable (.59–.84). Untimed accuracy scores were high across age groups, seemingly reflecting stability of naming into late adulthood; however, time- and cue-based scores revealed reduced efficiency in word retrieval with increasing age. Conclusions: These complementary auditory and visual naming test for older adults improve upon the current standard by providing more sensitive performance measures and the addition of an auditory–verbal component for assessing naming. Detection of subtle naming changes in healthy aging holds promise for capturing symptomatic naming changes during the early stages of neurocognitive disorders involving expressive language, potentially assisting in earlier diagnoses and more timely treatment.

scholarly journals Aging Increases Cross-Modal Distraction by Unexpected Sounds: Controlling for Response Speed

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia Leiva ◽  
Pilar Andrés ◽  
Fabrice B. R. Parmentier
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
Bayesian Estimation ◽  
Effect Size ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Response Speed ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Age Related ◽  
General Slowing

It is well-established that task-irrelevant sounds deviating from an otherwise predictable auditory sequence capture attention and disrupt ongoing performance by delaying responses in the ongoing task. In visual tasks, larger distraction by unexpected sounds (deviance distraction) has been reported in older than in young adults. However, past studies based this conclusion on the comparisons of absolute response times (RT) and did not control for the general slowing typically observed in older adults. Hence, it remains unclear whether this difference in deviance distraction between the two age groups reflects a genuine effect of aging or a proportional effect of similar size in both groups. We addressed this issue by using a proportional measure of distraction (PMD) to reanalyze the data from four past studies and used Bayesian estimation to generate credible estimates of the age-related difference in deviance distraction and its effect size. The results were unambiguous: older adults exhibited greater deviance distraction than young adults when controlling for baseline response speed (in each individual study and in the combined data set). Bayesian estimation revealed a proportional lengthening of RT by unexpected sounds that was about twice as large in older than in young adults (corresponding to a large statistical effect size). A similar analysis was carried out on the proportion of correct responses (PC) and produced converging results. Finally, an additional Bayesian analysis comparing data from cross-modal and uni-modal studies confirmed the selective effect of aging on distraction in the first and not the second. Overall, our study shows that older adults performing a visual categorization task do exhibit greater distraction by unexpected sounds than young adults and that this effect is not explicable by age-related general slowing.

scholarly journals Adaptation of reach action to a novel force-field is not predicted by acuity of dynamic proprioception in either older or younger adults

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick M. Kitchen ◽  
R Chris Miall
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Force Field ◽  
Visual Feedback ◽  
Spatial Working Memory ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Motor Deficits ◽  
Adaptive Performance ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Force Field Adaptation

AbstractHealthy ageing involves degeneration of the neuromuscular system which impacts movement control and proprioception. Yet the relationship between these sensory and motor deficits in upper limb reaching has not been examined in detail. Recently, we reported that age-related proprioceptive deficits were unrelated to accuracy in rapid arm movements, but whether this applied in motor tasks more heavily dependent on proprioceptive feedback was not clear. To address this, we have tested groups of younger and older adults on a force-field adaptation task under either full or limited visual feedback conditions and examined how performance related to dynamic proprioceptive acuity. Adaptive performance was similar between the age groups, regardless of visual feedback condition, although older adults showed increased after-effects. Physically inactive individuals made larger systematic (but not variable) proprioceptive errors, irrespective of age. However, dynamic proprioceptive acuity was unrelated to adaptation and there was no consistent evidence of proprioceptive recalibration with adaptation to the force-field for any group. Finally, in spite of clear age-dependent loss of spatial working memory capacity, we found no relationship between memory capacity and adaptive performance or proprioceptive acuity. Thus, non-clinical levels of deficit in dynamic proprioception, due to age or physical inactivity, do not affect force-field adaptation, even under conditions of limited visual feedback that might require greater proprioceptive control.

scholarly journals Adaptation of reach action to a novel force-field is not predicted by acuity of dynamic proprioception in either older or younger adults

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick M. Kitchen ◽  
R. Chris Miall
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Force Field ◽  
Visual Feedback ◽  
Spatial Working Memory ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Motor Deficits ◽  
Adaptive Performance ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Force Field Adaptation

AbstractHealthy ageing involves degeneration of the neuromuscular system which impacts movement control and proprioception. Yet the relationship between these sensory and motor deficits in upper limb reaching has not been examined in detail. Recently, we reported that age-related proprioceptive deficits were unrelated to accuracy in rapid arm movements, but whether this applied in motor tasks more heavily dependent on proprioceptive feedback was not clear. To address this, we have tested groups of younger and older adults on a force-field adaptation task under either full or limited visual feedback conditions and examined how performance was related to dynamic proprioceptive acuity. Adaptive performance was similar between the age groups, regardless of visual feedback condition, although older adults showed increased after-effects. Physically inactive individuals made larger systematic (but not variable) proprioceptive errors, irrespective of age. However, dynamic proprioceptive acuity was unrelated to adaptation and there was no consistent evidence of proprioceptive recalibration with adaptation to the force-field for any group. Finally, in spite of clear age-dependent loss of spatial working memory capacity, we found no relationship between memory capacity and adaptive performance or proprioceptive acuity. Thus, non-clinical levels of deficit in dynamic proprioception, due to age or physical inactivity, do not affect force-field adaptation, even under conditions of limited visual feedback that might require greater proprioceptive control.

Implicit false belief tracking is preserved in late adulthood

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (9) ◽  
pp. 1980-1987 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah A Grainger ◽  
Julie D Henry ◽  
Claire K Naughtin ◽  
Marita S Comino ◽  
Paul E Dux
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Mental States ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Implicit Processing ◽  
Late Adulthood ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Cognitive Operations

It is now well established that relative to their younger counterparts, older adults experience difficulties on tasks that require the conscious and explicit processing of others’ mental states (e.g., beliefs, intentions; theory of mind [ToM]). Despite the importance of relatively automatic and unconscious mental state attribution processes in everyday life, no study to date has tested whether tasks that require the implicit processing of others’ belief states also show age-related changes. In this study, younger and older adults completed an implicit false belief task, in which their eye movement patterns were monitored while they passively viewed true and false belief movies. In addition, they were assessed on measures of explicit ToM processing. While older adults showed impairments in explicit ToM processing relative to younger adults, both age groups demonstrated a similar capacity for implicit false belief processing. These findings suggest that implicit components of ToM are preserved in late adulthood and are consistent with dual process models of ageing that emphasise age-related stability in automatic processing and declines in more controlled and effortful cognitive operations. We discuss the potential implications of these findings for social interactions in old age.

scholarly journals Enhancing Spatial Attention and Working Memory in Younger and Older Adults

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (9) ◽  
pp. 1483-1497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camarin E. Rolle ◽  
Joaquin A. Anguera ◽  
Sasha N. Skinner ◽  
Bradley Voytek ◽  
Adam Gazzaley
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Response Time ◽  
Spatial Attention ◽  
Spatial Working Memory ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Attention Training ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Custom Made

Daily experiences demand both focused and broad allocation of attention for us to interact efficiently with our complex environments. Many types of attention have shown age-related decline, although there is also evidence that such deficits may be remediated with cognitive training. However, spatial attention abilities have shown inconsistent age-related differences, and the extent of potential enhancement of these abilities remains unknown. Here, we assessed spatial attention in both healthy younger and older adults and trained this ability in both age groups for 5 hr over the course of 2 weeks using a custom-made, computerized mobile training application. We compared training-related gains on a spatial attention assessment and spatial working memory task to age-matched controls who engaged in expectancy-matched, active placebo computerized training. Age-related declines in spatial attention abilities were observed regardless of task difficulty. Spatial attention training led to improved focused and distributed attention abilities as well as improved spatial working memory in both younger and older participants. No such improvements were observed in either of the age-matched control groups. Note that these findings were not a function of improvements in simple response time, as basic motoric function did not change after training. Furthermore, when using change in simple response time as a covariate, all findings remained significant. These results suggest that spatial attention training can lead to enhancements in spatial working memory regardless of age.

scholarly journals Resting‐State EEG Microstates Parallel Age‐Related Differences in Allocentric Spatial Working Memory Performance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeline Jabès ◽  
Giuliana Klencklen ◽  
Paolo Ruggeri ◽  
Christoph M. Michel ◽  
Pamela Banta Lavenex ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Resting State ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Spatial Working Memory ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Age Related

AbstractAlterations of resting-state EEG microstates have been associated with various neurological disorders and behavioral states. Interestingly, age-related differences in EEG microstate organization have also been reported, and it has been suggested that resting-state EEG activity may predict cognitive capacities in healthy individuals across the lifespan. In this exploratory study, we performed a microstate analysis of resting-state brain activity and tested allocentric spatial working memory performance in healthy adult individuals: twenty 25–30-year-olds and twenty-five 64–75-year-olds. We found a lower spatial working memory performance in older adults, as well as age-related differences in the five EEG microstate maps A, B, C, C′ and D, but especially in microstate maps C and C′. These two maps have been linked to neuronal activity in the frontal and parietal brain regions which are associated with working memory and attention, cognitive functions that have been shown to be sensitive to aging. Older adults exhibited lower global explained variance and occurrence of maps C and C′. Moreover, although there was a higher probability to transition from any map towards maps C, C′ and D in young and older adults, this probability was lower in older adults. Finally, although age-related differences in resting-state EEG microstates paralleled differences in allocentric spatial working memory performance, we found no evidence that any individual or combination of resting-state EEG microstate parameter(s) could reliably predict individual spatial working memory performance. Whether the temporal dynamics of EEG microstates may be used to assess healthy cognitive aging from resting-state brain activity requires further investigation.

scholarly journals Healthy aging profile in octogenarians in Brazil

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Cristina Viana Campos ◽  
Efigênia Ferreira e Ferreira ◽  
Andréa Maria Duarte Vargas ◽  
Lúcia Hisako Takase Gonçalves
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Decision Tree ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Population Based ◽  
P Value ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Monthly Income ◽  
Tree Model ◽  
Socioeconomic Characteristics

ABSTRACT Objective: to identify the healthy aging profile in octogenarians in Brazil. Method: this population-based epidemiological study was conducted using household interviews of 335 octogenarians in a Brazilian municipality. The decision-tree model was used to assess the healthy aging profile in relation to the socioeconomic characteristics evaluated at baseline. All of the tests used a p-value < 0.05. Results: the majority of the 335 participating older adults were women (62.1%), were aged between 80 and 84 years (50.4%), were widowed (53.4%), were illiterate (59.1%), had a monthly income of less than one minimum wage (59.1%), were retired (85.7%), lived with their spouse (63.8%), did not have a caregiver (60.3%), had two or more children (82.7%), and had two or more grandchildren (78.8%). The results indicate three age groups with a healthier aging profile: older adults aged 80 to 84 years (55.6%), older adults aged 85 years and older who are married (64.9%), and older adults aged 85 and older who do not have a partner or a caregiver (54.2%). Conclusion: the healthy aging profile of octogenarians can be explained by age group, marital status, and the presence of a caregiver.

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