Future time perspective drives younger and older adults to continue investing in failing activities

Inspired by socioemotional selectivity theory, we investigated age differences in further investment in failing situations by considering goal type and future time perspective. In Experiment 1, 32 younger and 30 older adults reported their likelihood of continued investing following an unsuccessful investment. Older adults were more willing to invest with emotional goals as opposed to knowledge and unspecified goals, while younger adults showed a greater willingness to invest with emotional and knowledge goals rather than unspecified goals. In Experiment 2, another sample of 32 younger and 34 older adults completed the same decision tasks as those in Experiment 1. After future time perspective restriction, the younger adults made decisions resembling Experiment 1's older adults, while after future time perspective expansion, the older adults behaved like Experiment 1's younger adults. These results indicate that future time perspective modification could reverse participants' goal prioritisation, manifesting in differential willingness to pursue further investment in decision scenarios with different goals. Our results represent important steps towards understanding the mechanism of older and younger adults' further investment in failing situations and illustrate that forging connections between the lifespan theory of motivation and further investment decision is critical for understanding adults' decision behaviours.     

To deliberate or not to deliberate: Interactions between age,task characteristics,and cognitive activity on decision making

The effects of aging and deliberative activities on decision making were examined. In two separate tasks, young, middle‐aged, and older adults were presented with four alternatives and given instructions to choose the best one. Following study, participants were either given additional time to think about their decision or were prevented from doing so. Decision quality did not benefit from additional deliberative activity when the structure of the stimuli facilitated fluent online processing. In contrast, deliberation promoted performance when such processing was more difficult. In addition, those individuals who focused on attribute information relevant to the decision context performed better than those who did not. Age differences in performance were minimal, but older adults with lower levels of education or cognitive ability tended to perform worse than the rest of the sample under conditions where deliberative skills were required to promote performance. The results are inconsistent with recent proposals regarding the benefits of passive deliberation. In addition, the results support the general assertion that the age effects in decision making will be most evident in situations dependent upon deliberative skills. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Health numeracy and cognitive decline in advanced age

ABSTRACT

The study aimed at investigating health numeracy in cognitively well performing healthy participants aged from 50 to 95 years as well as in participants with cognitive impairment, but no dementia (CIND). In cognitively well performing participants (n = 401), demographic variables and cognitive abilities (executive functions, reading comprehension, mental calculation, vocabulary) were associated with health numeracy. Older age, lower education, female gender as well as lower cognitive functions predicted low health numeracy. The effect of older age was partly mediated by executive functions and calculation abilities. Participants with CIND (n = 51) performed significantly lower than healthy controls in health numeracy. The findings suggest that cognitively well performing old individuals have difficulties in understanding health-related numerical information. The risk of misunderstanding health-related numerical information is increased in persons with CIND. As these population groups are frequently involved in health care decisions, particular attention has to be paid to providing numerical information in comprehensible form.     

The Development and Testing of a New Version of the Cognitive Reflection Test Applying Item Response Theory (IRT)

The cognitive reflection test (CRT) is a short measure of a person's ability to resist intuitive response tendencies and to produce a normatively correct response, which is based on effortful reasoning. Although the CRT is a very popular measure, its psychometric properties have not been extensively investigated. A major limitation of the CRT is the difficulty of the items, which can lead to floor effects in populations other than highly educated adults. The present study aimed at investigating the psychometric properties of the CRT applying item response theory analyses (a two‐parameter logistic model) and at developing a new version of the scale (the CRT‐long), which is appropriate for participants with both lower and higher levels of cognitive reflection. The results demonstrated the good psychometric properties of the original, as well as the new scale. The validity of the new scale was also assessed by measuring correlations with various indicators of intelligence, numeracy, reasoning and decision‐making skills, and thinking dispositions. Moreover, we present evidence for the suitability of the new scale to be used with developmental samples. Finally, by comparing the performance of adolescents and young adults on the CRT and CRT‐long, we report the first investigation into the development of cognitive reflection. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Susceptibility to retroactive interference: The effect of context as a function of age and cognition

Previous studies have shown that contextual cues improve memory performance and reduce interference in younger adults. However, it is not clear whether middle-aged and older adults can also benefit from contextual cues, or if this ability diminishes with ageing and cognitive decline. In order to test this question, we tested 69 middle-aged adults (aged 30–50 years) and 65 older adults (aged 65–85). Participants completed a retroactive interference paradigm with or without contextual cues. Cognitive functioning of older adults was assessed using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which is a sensitive and highly validated tool to detect cognitive decline in older age. The results showed that while middle-aged adults were able to benefit from context to improve recognition and reduce interference, older adults were not able to benefit from it. However, when we compared older adults with lower (<26) and higher (≥26) scores on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, we found that older adults with high cognitive functioning could benefit from context advantage at retrieval to improve recognition compared to those with lower cognitive functioning. Yet, similar to older adults with lower cognitive functioning, they could not benefit from context advantage at encoding and hence were still susceptible to interference.     

Older adults prefer less choice than young adults

Previous research has demonstrated that older adults prefer less autonomy and seek less information when making decisions on their own relative to young adults (for a review, see M. Mather, 2006). Would older adults also prefer fewer options from which to choose? The authors tested this hypothesis in the context of different decision domains. Participants completed a choice preferences survey in which they indicated their desired number of choices across 6 domains of health care and everyday decisions. The hypothesis was confirmed across all decision domains. The authors discuss implications from these results as they relate to theories of aging and health care policy.     

Overbidding in Value Elicitation: When Consumers Report Inflated Reservation Prices,and What to Do About It

A common goal of value elicitation is to determine consumers’ reservation prices (i.e., maximum willingness to pay) for goods and services. Because the results of such studies are often used as inputs in decision making, it is important to understand when reservation prices estimated in value elicitation studies are likely to be biased, and how to correct for such biases. Experiment 1 of this study investigated attributes of the context in which consumers’ values are elicited that may lead to consumers overbidding their true reservation prices. The results demonstrate that the likelihood of overbidding is high when consumers perceive that they will not have to pay their stated reservation price, and particularly high when they also perceive that stating a high reservation price will increase the likelihood of subsequently receiving a good. Experiment 2 demonstrated that priming budget considerations prior to value elicitation produced value estimates closer to the actual price of a good compared to a condition in which budget was not primed. Implications for the practice of value elicitation and the use of estimates provided by such studies in decision making are discussed.     

The attraction effect in decision making: superior performance by older adults

Previous work showed that older adults' choice performance can be wiser than that of younger adults (Tentori, Osherson, Hasher, & May, 2001). We contrasted two possible interpretations: a general expertise/wisdom view that suggests that older adults are generally more skilled at making decisions than younger adults and a domain-specific expertise view that suggests that older adults are more skilled decision makers only in domains in which they have greater knowledge. These hypotheses were contrasted using attraction effect tasks in two different domains: earning extra credit in a course and grocery shopping, domains presumed to be of different levels of knowledge to younger and older adults. Older adults showed consistent choice for both domains; younger adults showed consistent choice only for the extra credit problem. Several explanations of these findings are considered, including Damasio's somatic marker theory and age differences in reliance on heuristic versus analytic styles.     

Who are maximizers? Future oriented and highly numerate individuals

Two studies investigated cognitive mechanisms that may be associated with people's tendency to maximize. Maximizers are individuals who are spending a great amount of effort in order to find the very best option in a decision situation, rather than stopping the decision process when they encounter a satisfying option. These studies show that maximizers are more future oriented than other people, which may motivate them to invest the extra energy into optimal choices. Maximizers also have higher numerical skills, possibly facilitating the cognitive processes involved with decision trade‐offs.     

The impacts of task relevance and cognitive load on adults’ decision information search

ABSTRACT

Higher relevance may increase older adults’ engagement in cognitively demanding activities; however, whether this effect will maintain when available cognitive resources are limited? Consequently, we investigated the joint impact of task relevance and cognitive load on older and younger adults’ decision search behaviors. We adopted a 2 (age: young/old) × 2 (cognitive load: without load/with load) × 2 (task relevance: high/low) mixed design. Sixty-one younger and 63 older adults completed high-relevance and low-relevance decisions. Our results revealed that older (vs. younger) adults took more time and more alternative-based search before decision-making. Both age groups sampled less information with an additional memory task. Additionally, they spent more time and effort to sample more information on high-relevance (vs. low-relevance) decisions; however, such differences disappeared when with an additional memory task. Task relevance promoted both age groups' search engagement, but this effect was subjected to their available cognitive resources.     

Age effects and gaze patterns in recognising emotional expressions: An in-depth look at gaze measures and covariates

The present study investigated predictors of age effects in emotion recognition accuracy. Older and younger adults were tested on a battery of cognitive, vision, and affective questionnaires; participants' eyes were also tracked while they completed an emotion recognition task. Older adults were worse at recognising sad, angry, and fearful expressions than younger adults. When controlling for covariates related to emotion recognition accuracy, younger adults still outperformed older adults in recognising anger and sadness. Younger adults tended to pay more attention to the eyes than older adults. Results suggest that age-related gaze patterns in emotion recognition may depend on the specific emotion being recognised and may not generalise across stimuli sets.     

Aging and decision‐making competence: an analysis of comprehension and consistency skills in older versus younger adults considering health‐plan options

Older adults need to maintain strong decision‐making capabilities as they age. However, we know little about how age‐related physical and psychological changes affect older adults' judgment and decision processes. This paper reports the results of research comparing older versus younger adults' performance on evaluation and choice tasks about health‐plan options. In particular, comprehension and consistency in judgments (across separate versus joint evaluation contexts) were examined. Results indicated that increasing age was related to greater comprehension errors and inconsistent preferences, even when covariates (education, income, gender, self‐perceived skill and health, decision style, and attitude toward delegation) were taken into account. Discussion of the results emphasizes difficulties in interpreting the meaning of age differences in performance on decision tasks and the need for research that ascertains the seriousness of the consequences of age differences in real‐life tasks. The implications for providing decision‐aiding interventions for older adults are highlighted. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Neurocognitive ageing of storage and executive processes

Converging behavioural and neuropsychological evidence indicates that age-related changes in working memory contribute substantially to cognitive decline in older adults. Important questions remain about the relationship between working memory storage and executive components and how they are affected by the normal ageing process. In several studies using positron emission tomography (PET), we find age differences in the patterns of frontal activation during working memory tasks. We find that separable age differences can be linked to different cognitive operations underlying short-term information storage, and interference resolution. Some operations are associated with age-related increases in activation, with older adults displaying bilateral activations and recruiting prefrontal areas more than younger adults. Other operations are associated with age-related decreases in activation. We consider the implications of these results for understanding the working memory system and potential compensatory processes in the ageing brain.     

老年人日常人际问题解决中的悲伤情绪体验和情绪调节策略: 年龄和人格特质的作用

考察了日常人际问题解决中老年人的悲伤情绪体验和情绪调节策略与青年人的差异,以及年龄和人格特质的作用。共45名老年人和59名青年人接受半结构化访谈和人格特质测量。结果表明：（1）以教育水平为协变量的方差分析表明,老年人和青年人的悲伤情绪体验没有显著差异。老年人的被动情绪调节策略的使用和青年人存在显著差异;（2）老年人的被动情绪调节策略不但与年龄有关,而且与悲伤情绪体验有关。悲伤情绪体验可以显著预测其被动情绪调节策略使用;（3）老年人的悲伤情绪体验与人格特质神经质维度存在显著正相关;（4）老年人与年轻人的被动情绪调节策略都与悲伤情绪有关,但老年人的被动情绪调节策略不能由人格特质显著预测,而青年人的被动调节策略还可以由人格特质内外向维度显著预测。人格特质的内外向维度对老年人和青年人的前摄性情绪调节策略的预测效应是一致的。最后针对老年人的悲伤情绪体验和情绪调节策略的意义进行了讨论。     

Older adults encode--but do not always use--perceptual details: intentional versus unintentional effects of detail on memory judgments

Investigations of memory deficits in older individuals have concentrated on their increased likelihood of forgetting events or details of events that were actually encountered (errors of omission). However, mounting evidence demonstrates that normal cognitive aging also is associated with an increased propensity for errors of commission-shown in false alarms or false recognition. The present study examined the origins of this age difference. Older and younger adults each performed three types of memory tasks in which details of encountered items might influence performance. Although older adults showed greater false recognition of related lures on a standard (identical) old/new episodic recognition task, older and younger adults showed parallel effects of detail on repetition priming and meaning-based episodic recognition (decreased priming and decreased meaning-based recognition for different relative to same exemplars). The results suggest that the older adults encoded details but used them less effectively than the younger adults in the recognition context requiring their deliberate, controlled use.     

认知老化对于老年人决策过程的影响:动机的调节作用

有关老化和决策制定的研究并没有发现一致的年龄差异。从决策过程的角度,论述了老化对于决策制定的多层面影响。从认知层面来讲,流体认知能力的衰减会使老年人在决策制定前搜索更少的信息,使用非补偿性策略,基于属性进行信息搜索和比较;晶体认知能力的相对保持则在一定情况下弥补了这种消极影响;从动机层面来讲,关注情绪管理目标的老年人会倾向于寻求更多积极的信息,为了避免权衡诱发的消极情绪而更多地使用非补偿性策略。动机对于认知老化的消极影响有调节作用。具体来说,社会情绪选择理论和选择性投入假设认为,当决策任务符合老年人的社会目标,即情绪管理目标时,能够激活老年人投入认知资源的动机,从而缓解认知资源的衰减对于老年人决策表现的消极影响。未来的研究需要通过实验设计进一步探索动机与认知的交互作用,将多种过程追踪技术结合起来,明晰动机和认知能力在老年人决策制定中的作用。另外考虑到在社会目标方面的年龄差异,对于老年人决策质量的衡量应该更加注重主观决策质量。     

How emotion affects older adults' memories for event details

As adults age, they tend to have problems remembering the details of events and the contexts in which events occurred. This review presents evidence that emotion can enhance older adults' abilities to remember episodic detail. Older adults are more likely to remember affective details of an event (e.g., whether something was good or bad, or how an event made them feel) than they are to remember non-affective details, and they remember more details of emotional events than of non-emotional ones. Moreover, in some instances, emotion appears to narrow the age gap in memory performance. It may be that memory for affective context, or for emotional events, relies on cognitive and neural processes that are relatively preserved in older adults.     

Working memory affects older adults’ use of context in spoken-word recognition

Many older listeners report difficulties in understanding speech in noisy situations. Working memory and other cognitive skills may modulate older listeners’ ability to use context information to alleviate the effects of noise on spoken-word recognition. In the present study, we investigated whether verbal working memory predicts older adults’ ability to immediately use context information in the recognition of words embedded in sentences, presented in different listening conditions. In a phoneme-monitoring task, older adults were asked to detect as fast and as accurately as possible target phonemes in sentences spoken by a target speaker. Target speech was presented without noise, with fluctuating speech-shaped noise, or with competing speech from a single distractor speaker. The gradient measure of contextual probability (derived from a separate offline rating study) affected the speed of recognition. Contextual facilitation was modulated by older listeners’ verbal working memory (measured with a backward digit span task) and age across listening conditions. Working memory and age, as well as hearing loss, were also the most consistent predictors of overall listening performance. Older listeners’ immediate benefit from context in spoken-word recognition thus relates to their ability to keep and update a semantic representation of the sentence content in working memory.