Automatic and voluntary control of attention in young and older adults

Young and older adults searched for a target character in a 3-item display. On each trial, both a symbolic cue (arrow at fixation) and a spatial cue (abrupt onset of one item) could indicate the target's position. Participants were told to use the central arrow cue on all trials because it had 75% validity. The onset cue also had 75% validity for half the participants and 25% validity for the other half. Both age groups showed about the same cost and benefit effects for the central arrow cues, but the abrupt onsets had much larger cuing effects for older adults. Young adults were able to suppress at least partially an automatic attentional response to an abrupt onset item when the arrow cue preceded the onset and had a higher validity than the onset cue. Older adults appeared to be less able to inhibit their responses to abrupt onsets and to disengage their attention from invalid onset cues than were the young adults.     

Does causal knowledge help us be faster and more frugal in our decisions?

One challenge that has to be addressed by the fast and frugal heuristics program is how people manage to select, from the abundance of cues that exist in the environment, those to rely on when making decisions. We hypothesize that causal knowledge helps people target particular cues and estimate their validities. This hypothesis was tested in three experiments. Results show that when causal information about some cues was available (Experiment 1), participants preferred to search for these cues first and to base their decisions on them. When allowed to learn cue validities in addition to causal information (Experiment 2), participants also became more frugal (i.e., they searched fewer of the available cues), made more accurate decisions, and were more precise in estimating cue validities than was a control group that did not receive causal information. These results can be attributed to the causal relation between the cues and the criterion, rather than to greater saliency of the causal cues (Experiment 3). Overall, our results support the hypothesis that causal knowledge aids in the learning of cue validities and is treated as a meta-cue for identifying highly valid cues.     

Timing of reflexive visuospatial orienting in young, young-old, and old-old adults

This study examined adult age differences in reflexive orienting to two types of uninformative spatial cues: central arrows and peripheral onsets. In two experiments using a Posner cuing task, young adults (ages 18–28 years), young-old adults (60–74 years), and old-old adults (75–92 years) responded to targets that were preceded 100–1,000 ms earlier by a central arrow or a peripheral abrupt onset. In Experiment 1, the cue remained present upon target onset. Facilitation effects at short cue–target stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) were prolonged in duration for the two older groups relative to the young adults. At longer cue–target SOAs, inhibition of return (IOR) that was initiated by peripheral onset cues was observed in the performance of young adults but not in that of the two older groups. In Experiment 2, the cue was presented briefly and removed prior to target onset. The change in cue duration minimized age differences (particularly for young-old adults) in facilitation effects and led to IOR for all three age groups. The findings are consistent with the idea that attentional control settings change with age, with higher settings for older adults leading to delayed disengagement from spatial cues.     

Prospective memory across adolescence: the effects of age and cue focality

The present study examined the role of controlled attention in age differences in event-based prospective memory performance across adolescence. The researchers tested whether presenting the prospective memory cue in or out of focal awareness of the ongoing task (resulting in low versus high demands for controlled attention, respectively) might affect age-related prospective memory performance. In total, 119 Chinese participants ages 13 to 20 took part in this study (60 adolescents: age M = 13.26 years, SD = 0.50; 23 boys; 59 young adults: age M = 19.70 years, SD = 0.87; 19 men). Findings demonstrated a significant interaction, F(1, 114) = 6.41, p < .05. No effect of age on prospective memory performance was revealed when a focal cue was used (F < 1), whereas there was a reliable age effect between adolescents and young adults when nonfocal prospective memory cues were presented, F(1, 59) = 16.13, p < .01. This pattern of results suggests that the interplay of both available resources of controlled attention and working memory, along with specific task demands, may contribute to possible age differences in prospective memory performance across adolescence. Results are discussed in the context of the multiprocess theory of prospective memory.     

Retrospective cues based on object features improve visual working memory performance in older adults

Research with younger adults has shown that retrospective cues can be used to orient top-down attention toward relevant items in working memory. We examined whether older adults could take advantage of these cues to improve memory performance. Younger and older adults were presented with visual arrays of five colored shapes; during maintenance, participants were presented either with an informative cue based on an object feature (here, object shape or color) that would be probed, or with an uninformative, neutral cue. Although older adults were less accurate overall, both age groups benefited from the presentation of an informative, feature-based cue relative to a neutral cue. Surprisingly, we also observed differences in the effectiveness of shape versus color cues and their effects upon post-cue memory load. These results suggest that older adults can use top-down attention to remove irrelevant items from visual working memory, provided that task-relevant features function as cues.     

Perspective-taking judgments among young adults, middle-aged, and elderly people

Perspective-taking judgments among young adults, middle-aged, and elderly people were examined. In 1 condition, participants were instructed to judge the likelihood of acceptance of a painkiller as a function of 3 cues: severity of the condition, potential side effects, and level of trust in the health care provider. In the other condition, participants were instructed to judge the likelihood of purchasing pieces of clothing. Judgments were given from 2 viewpoints: the viewpoint of another person known to place no importance on one of the 3 cues, and the viewpoint of another person known to place very great importance on this cue. The hypotheses were that elderly people would not, to the same extent as young adults, be likely to discount the impact of the "no-importance" cue, and to magnify the impact of the "very important" cue. In both judgment situations, the results support these hypotheses.     

Aging and intuitive physics

The present study was aimed at comparing the judgment capacities manifested by young adults, middle-aged adults, and elderly people in an everyday life setting implying the consideration of direct as well as inverse relationships between the cues and the criterion. The chosen situation was borrowed from elementary physics and concerned the relationships between mass, volume and density. In forming their estimations of mass, all elderly people were able to use volume and density information. In addition, most of them were able to combine these pieces of information in a correct, multiplicative way. In forming their estimations of volume, all elderly people were able to use mass and density information but a majority of them used the density information in a direct way. By contrast, most young and middle-aged adults correctly used the density information in an inverse way. The findings strengthen and extend the case made by Chasseigne et al. [Acta Psychologica 97 (1997) 235] as regards the trouble elderly people face in using inverse relationships in a judgment situation. The difficulty elderly people face is not confined to learning settings. It may also be observed in ecological, non-learning environments, where the relationships considered do not entirely depend on the experimenter's choice.     

Optimal cue aggregation in the absence of criterion knowledge

The study of multi‐cue judgment investigates how decision makers aggregate cues to predict the value of a criterion variable. We consider a multi‐cue judgment task in which decision makers have prior knowledge of inter‐cue relationships but are ignorant of how the cues correlate with the criterion. In this setting, a naive judgment strategy prescribes weighting the cues equally. Although many participants are well described via an equal weighting scheme, we find that a substantial minority of participants make predictions consistent with a weighting scheme based on a low‐dimensional projection of the cue space that optimally takes into account inter‐cue correlations. The use of such a weighting scheme is consistent with minimizing maximal error in prediction when the cue‐criterion relationships are unknown.     

Nonspecific verbal cues alleviate forgetting by young children

Verbal reminders play a pervasive role in memory retrieval by human adults. In fact, relatively nonspecific verbal information (e.g. ‘Remember the last time we ate at that restaurant?’) will often cue vivid recollections of a past event even when presented outside the original encoding context. Although research has shown that memory retrieval by young children can be initiated by physical cues and by highly specific verbal cues, the effect of less specific verbal cues is not known. Using a Visual Recognition Memory (VRM) procedure, we examined the effect of nonspecific verbal cues on memory retrieval by 4‐year‐old children. Our findings showed that nonspecific verbal cues were as effective as highly specific nonverbal cues in facilitating memory retrieval after a 2‐week delay. We conclude that, at least by 4 years of age, children are able to use nonspecific verbal reminders to cue memory retrieval, and that the VRM paradigm may be particularly valuable in examining the age at which this initially occurs.     

Development of spatial memory and spatial orientation in preschoolers and primary school children

The present study addresses the question of what kind of information children use when orientating in new environments, if given proximal and distal landmarks, and how spatial memory develops in the investigated age groups. Ten 5-year-old, ten 7-year-old and ten 10-year-old children were presented with the ‘Kiel Locomotor Maze’, containing features of the Radial Arm Maze and the Morris Water Maze, in order to assess spatial memory and orientation. Children had to learn to approach baited locations only. Task difficulty was equated with respect to the children's age. Training was given until the children reached criterion. During testing, the maze configuration and response requirements were systematically altered, including response rotation, cue rotation, cue deletion and response rotation with cue deletion in order to assess the spatial strategies used by the children. During training and testing, working-memory errors (WM), reference-memory errors (RM) and working-reference memory errors (WR) were recorded. As expected, no difference between age groups appeared during training, thus confirming comparable task difficulty across age groups. During testing, age groups differed significantly with regard to the orientation strategy used. The 5-year-olds were bound to a cue strategy, orientating towards local, proximal cues. The 10-year-olds mastered all tasks, thus displaying a place strategy, being able to use distal cues for orientation, and were even able to do so after being rotated 180°. The 7-year-olds proved to be at an age of transition: five of them were bound to a cue strategy, five children were able to adopt a place strategy. The differences in the orientation strategies used by children of different age groups was reflected by the sum of errors they made, also by RM. WM were found to be rare, especially in older children. We conclude that preschoolers use a cue strategy, that the development of place strategies occurs during primary school age and seems to be complete by the age of 10 years.     

Maturation of Spatial Navigation Strategies: Convergent Findings from Computerized Spatial Environments and Self-Report

Using 2 computerized spatial navigation tasks, we examined the development of cue and place learning in children ages 3 to 10 years, comparing their data to adults. We also examined relations between place learning in computerized and real space. Results showed children use the 2-dimensional space as if it were real space. Results also demonstrated that children ages 3 to 10 years cue learn (locating a visible target) but do not show evidence of mature place learning (locating an invisible target) until around age 10 years. Self-report data indicated an age-related increase in use of relations among distal cues during place learning. Children ages 3 to 4 years did not report using distal cues; most 9- to 10-year-old children reported using multiple distal cues to guide their search during place learning. Results suggest that, as maturation proceeds, children make increasing use of relations among multiple distal cues to guide a search for places in space.     

Future thinking instructions improve prospective memory performance in adolescents

Studies on prospective memory (PM) development in adolescents point to age-related increases through to adulthood. The goal of the present study was to examine whether instructing adolescents to engage in an episodic prospection of themselves executing future actions (i.e., future thinking) when forming an intention would improve their PM performance and reduce age-related differences. Further, we set out to explore whether future thinking instructions result in stronger memory traces and/or stronger cue–context associations by evaluating retrospective memory for the PM cues after task completion and monitoring costs during PM task processing. Adolescents and young adults were allocated to either the future thinking, repeated-encoding or standard condition. As expected, adolescents had fewer correct PM responses than young adults. Across age groups, PM performance in the standard condition was lower than in the other encoding conditions. Importantly, the results indicate a significant interaction of age by encoding condition. While adolescents benefited most from future thinking instructions, young adults performed best in the repeated-encoding condition. The results also indicate that the beneficial effects of future thinking may result from deeper intention-encoding through the simulation of future task performance.     

Understanding unfamiliar words in young, young-old, and old-old adults: inferential processing and the abstraction-deficit hypothesis

Previous research suggests that older adults derive interpretations of unfamiliar words that are less precise than those of young adults (D. McGinnis & E. M. Zelinski, 2000). Thirty-one adults aged 18-37, 27 aged 65-74, and 28 aged 75-87 read passages containing unfamiliar words (1 per passage) and were asked to think aloud during reading. After reading each passage, participants selected meaning-relevant cues and rated the quality of 4 definition options. Compared with the 2 younger groups, the oldest group rated thematic and irrelevant definitions significantly higher, and their think-aloud protocols included more generalized inferences. Results pertaining to cue selection were not significant. Taken together, these results suggest that age differences in meaning derivation may be related to inferential processing that is overgeneralized, providing support for the abstraction-deficit hypothesis.     

Children's perceptions of and beliefs about facial maturity

The author studied children's and young adult's perceptions of facial age and beliefs about the sociability, cognitive ability, and physical fitness of adult faces. From pairs of photographs of adult faces, participants (4-6 years old, 8-10 years old, 13-16 years old, and 19-23 years old) selected the one face that appeared younger, older, better at remembering, smarter, more caring, friendlier, healthier, or stronger. Pairings consisted of faces at different adult age levels (young adults, middle-age adults, older adults, and very old adults.) Older participants were more sensitive to age differences in older faces and to faces more proximal in age. Children and adolescents believed that very old adult faces appeared to be less cognitively able than middle-aged faces (for children) and young adult faces (for adolescents). Very old male faces were judged to be less sociable. Old and very old faces were judged to be less physically fit than young and middle-aged faces. Significant positive correlation coefficients were found between the youngest children's abilities to discriminate between the adult faces of proximal age and youthful biases when selecting faces appearing to be more sociable and cognitively able. The results are discussed with respect to the development of facial information-processing skills and how those skills may be associated with the development of and changes in beliefs about older adults.     

Explicit cue weighting in a prediction task

Two experiments were conducted to examine the strategies people use to determine the cue weights in a two-cue prediction task. In order to examine the subjects' strategies, half of the subjects in Experiment 1 were asked to state the weights explicitly for the two cues on each trial rather than directly estimating the criterion value. The subjects' estimates of the criterion were then calculated on the basis of the estimated weights. The results of Experiment 1 suggested that most subjects use a hypothesis-testing approach to determine cue weights. In addition, it appeared that most of the subjects randomly tested hypotheses about the relative importance of the cues, which did not prove to be an effective strategy. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that failure to learn the relative importance of the cues was not due to failure to test the appropriate cue weights at some point during the task, but to failure to test the hypothesized cue weights on enough trials to evaluate their adequacy sufficiently.     

Colour cues or spatial cues? Context-dependent preferences in the European greenfinch (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Carduelis chloris</Emphasis>)

Using featural cues such as colour to identify ephemeral food can increase foraging efficiency. Featural cues may change over time however; therefore, animals should use spatial cues to relocate food that occurs in a temporally stable position. We tested this hypothesis by measuring the cue preferences of captive greenfinches Carduelis chloris when relocating food hidden in a foraging tray. In these standardised associative learning trials, greenfinches favoured colour cues when returning to a foraging context that they had encountered before only once (“one-trial test”) but switched to spatial cues when they had encountered that scenario on ten previous occasions (“repeated-trial test”). We suggest that repeated encounters generated a context in which individuals had a prior expectation of temporal stability, and hence context-dependent cue selection. Next, we trained birds to find food in the absence of colour cues but tested them in the presence of visual distracters. Birds were able to learn spatial cues after one encounter, but only when visual distracters were identical in colouration. When a colourful distracter was present in the test phase, cue selection was random. Unlike the first one-trial test, birds were not biased towards this colourful visual distracter. Together, these results suggest that greenfinches are able to learn both cue types, colour cue biases represent learning, not simply distraction, and spatial cues are favoured over colour cues only in temporally stable contexts.     

The effect of cues on young children's abilities to discriminate among thoughts, feelings and behaviours

OBJECTIVE: To determine if cues help young children discriminate among thoughts, feelings and behaviours. PARTICIPANTS: Ninety-six children aged 4-7 years from three schools in Norwich, UK. DESIGN: Within each age band (4, 5, 6, 7), children were randomised to the cue or the no cue condition on a stratified basis ensuring that equal numbers of boys and girls from each school were in each of the eight cells (cue condition x age). Cues were glove puppets and post boxes. The effect of IQ was controlled. MEASURES: A discrimination task, in which children were asked to identify a thought, a feeling and a behaviour from each of six brief stories, and a brief IQ assessment were administered to children individually. RESULTS: There was a significant effect of age and cue condition on performance; older children and those who were presented with the cue performed better. There were no gender differences and no interaction between cue condition and age. CONCLUSION: Many young children discriminated among thoughts, feelings and behaviours suggesting that they may be able to engage in this aspect of cognitive behaviour therapy. Simple cues (puppets and posting boxes) improved children's performance and these may be useful therapeutic tools with young children.     

Positional cues in serial learning: The spin-list technique

To test the hypothesis that serial learning depends largely on the encoding and retrieval of position-to-item associations, we examined whether people can learn spin lists on which starting position is randomly varied across successive learning trials. By turning positional information from a reliable cue into a source of intertrial interference, we expected learning to be greatly impaired. Contrary to this hypothesis, we found that participants were only slightly worse at serial learning under spin conditions and that this impairment reflects a substantial increase in initiation errors coupled with a small increase in intertrial forgetting. These data show that participants can effectively use nonpositional cues when positional cues are unreliable.     

The effect of newly trained verbal and nonverbal labels for the cues in probabilistic category learning

Learning in a well-established paradigm of probabilistic category learning, the weather prediction task, has been assumed to be mediated by a variety of strategies reflecting explicit learning processes, such as hypothesis testing, when it is administered to young healthy participants. Higher categorization accuracy has been observed in the task when explicit processes are facilitated. We hypothesized that furnishing verbal labels for the cues would boost the formation, testing, and application of verbal rules, leading to higher categorization accuracy. We manipulated the availability of cue names by training separate groups of participants for three consecutive days to associate hard-to-name artificial auditory cues to pseudowords or to hard-to-name ideograms, or to associate stimulus intensity with colors; a fourth group remained unexposed to the cues. Verbal labels, cue individuation, and exposure to the stimulus set each had an additive effect on categorization performance in a subsequent 200-trial session of the weather prediction task using these auditory cues. This study suggests that cue nameability, when controlled for cue individuation and cue familiarity, has an effect on hypothesis-testing processes underlying category learning.     

Developmental changes in the perception of adult facial age

The author studied children's (aged 5-16 years) and young adults' (aged 18-22 years) perception and use of facial features to discriminate the age of mature adult faces. In Experiment 1, participants rated the age of unaltered and transformed (eyes, nose, eyes and nose, and whole face blurred) adult faces (aged 20-80 years). In Experiment 2, participants ranked facial age sets (aged 20-50, 20-80, and 50-80 years) that had varying combinations of older and younger facial features: eyes, noses, mouths, and base faces. Participants of all ages attended to similar facial features when making judgments about adult facial age, although young children (aged 5-7 years) were less accurate than were older children (aged 9-11 years), adolescents (aged 13-16 years), and young adults when making facial age judgments. Young children were less sensitive to some facial features when making facial age judgments.