Cognitive Ageing

The effects of age on the strategic use of pitch accents in memory for discourse: A processing-resource account.

by Scott Fraundorf

Fraundorf, S. H., Watson, D. G., & Benjamin. A. S. (2012). The effects of age on the strategic use of pitch accents in memory for discourse: A processing-resource account. Psychology and Aging, 27, 88-98.

In two experiments, we investigated age-related changes in how prosodic pitch accents affect memory. Participants... more In two experiments, we investigated age-related changes in how prosodic pitch accents affect memory. Participants listened to recorded discourses that contained two contrasts between pairs of items (e.g., one story contrasted British scientists with French scientists and Malaysia with Indonesia). The end of each discourse referred to one item from each pair; these references received a pitch accent that either denoted contrast (L+H* in the ToBI system) or did not (H*). A contrastive accent on a particular pair improved later recognition memory equally for young and older adults. However, older adults showed decreased memory if the other pair received a contrastive accent (Experiment 1). Young adults with low working memory performance also showed this penalty (Experiment 2). These results suggest that pitch accents guide processing resources to important information for both older and younger adults but diminish memory for less important information in groups with reduced resources, including older adults.

Cognitive reserve, cortical plasticity and resistance to Alzheimer’s disease

by Steven Chance

in press in Alzheimer's Research & Therapy, co-authored with MM Esiri

There are aspects of the ageing brain and cognition that remain poorly understood despite intensive efforts to... more There are aspects of the ageing brain and cognition that remain poorly understood despite intensive efforts to understand how they are related. Cognitive reserve is the concept that has been developed to explain how it is that some elderly people with extensive neuropathology associated with dementia show little
in the way of cognitive decline. Cognitive reserve is intimately related to cortical plasticity but this, as it relates to ageing, remains poorly understood at the present time. Despite the shortcomings in understanding, we do have some knowledge on
which to base eff orts to minimise the likelihood of an elderly person developing dementia. For some risks the evidence is far from secure, but resistance to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) appears from epidemiological studies to be contributed to by avoiding hypertension in middle life, obesity, depression, smoking and diabetes and head injury and by undertaking extended years of education, physical exercise, and
social and intellectual pursuits in middle and late life. Nutritional factors may also promote healthy brain ageing. Resistance to AD is also contributed to by genetic factors, particularly apolipoprotein E2, but also some combinations of other genetic polymorphisms. Although multiple factors and possible interventions may infl uence cognitive reserve and susceptibility
to dementia, much more work is required on the mechanisms of action in order to determine which, if any, may improve the clinical and epidemiological picture. Understanding of how such factors operate may lead to new initiatives to keep the elderly
population in the 21st century able to lead active and fulfi lling lives.

Too Old to Choose? The Effects of Age and Age Related Constructs on Consumer Decision Making

by David Woisetschläger

Co-authored with Heiner Evanschitzky, published in Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 35, 2008

Age-related differences on cognitive overload in an audio-visual memory task

by Jennifer Murray

(2011) Co-authored with Dr. Mary Thomson, GCU

The present study aimed to provide evidence outlining whether the type of stimuli used in teaching would provoke... more The present study aimed to provide evidence outlining whether the type of stimuli used in teaching would provoke differing levels of recall across three different academic age groups. One hundred and twenty-one participants, aged 11–25 years, were given a language based memory task in the form of a wordlist consisting of 15 concrete and 15 abstract words,
presented either visually, acoustically, or a combination of both audio and visual presentation. The study found that the presence of cognitive overload was greater in the older academic age participants than in the younger groups and that as academic experience increased, the visual presentation of the target stimuli produced greater levels of recall than was the case with acoustic and audio-visual presentation. Overall the findings indicate that cognitive overload increases with age, as the younger-age groups were found to have significantly higher levels of word recall in the audio-visual condition than the older groups.

full paper attached.

Age effects on different components of theory of mind

by Alexandre Bejanin

The effects of aging on the cognitive and affective dimensions of theory of mind (ToM), and on the latter’s links with... more The effects of aging on the cognitive and affective dimensions of theory of mind (ToM), and on the latter’s links with other cognitive processes, such as information processing speed, executive functions and episodic memory, are still unclear. We therefore investigated these effects in young (n = 25), middle-aged (n = 20) and older adults (n = 25), using separate subjective and objective assessment tasks. Furthermore, a novel composite task probed participants’ abilities to infer both cognitive and affective mental states in an interpersonal context. Although age affected the objective ToM tests, results revealed a direct aging effect on the second-order ToM, but an indirect one on the first-order cognitive ToM, mediated mainly by age-related declines in executive functions. This study supports the notion of an age-related distinction between subjective and objective assessments of ToM, and confirms that ToM is a complex mental ability with several characteristics reliant to some extent on executive processes.

O ‘DEVIR’ DO AMOR E DA SEXUALIDADE NO PROCESSO DO ENVELHECIMENTO

by Thiago de Almeida

published in 2011

Become a Demosthenes! Compensating Age-Related Memory Deficits with Expert Strategies

by Reinhold Kliegl

Kliegl, R., & Philipp, D. (2007). Become a Demosthenes! Compensating age-related memory deficits with expert strategies. In P.C. Kyllonen, R.D. Roberts, & L. Stankov (eds.), Extending intelligence: Enhancements and new constructs. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Cognitive plasticity assessment

by Reinhold Kliegl

Kliegl, R., & Philipp, D. (2002). Cognitive plasticity assessment.
In R. Fernandez-Ballesteros (Ed.), Encyclopedia of psychological assessment. (pp. 234-237) London: Sage Publications.

Wpływ starzenia się na podejmowanie decyzji (Decision-making and aging)

by Agata Sobków

in Polish

Published in 'Decyzje', 2011

Dealing with the problem of aging society is nowadays a challenging area of interests for both practice and science.... more Dealing with the problem of aging society is nowadays a challenging area of interests for both practice and science. Cognitive decline influences the decision-making process in elderly people. Changes in effectiveness of decisions are however situation-dependent. Aging not only affects the quality of decisions, but also strategy selection and choice satisfaction. Contemporary research and theories are discussed in this paper.

Reading strategy modulates parafoveal-on-foveal effects in sentence reading

by Reinhold Kliegl

Wotschak, C., & Kliegl, R. (2011, September 20). Reading strategy modulates parafoveal-on-foveal effects in sentence reading. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

Preprint, data and R scripts at Potsdam Mind Research Repository:
( http://read.psych.uni-potsdam.de/pmr2 )
Filed under "Eye Movement Corpus Analyses"

Task demands and individual differences have been linked reliably to word skipping during reading. Such differences in... more Task demands and individual differences have been linked reliably to word skipping during reading. Such differences in fixation probability may imply a selection effect for multivariate analyses of eye-movement corpora if selection effects correlate with word properties of skipped words. For example, with fewer fixations on short and highly frequent words the power to detect parafoveal-on-foveal effects is reduced. We demonstrate that increasing the fixation probability on function words with a manipulation of the expected difficulty and frequency of questions reduces an age difference in skipping probability (i.e., old adults become comparable to young adults) and helps to uncover significant parafoveal-on-foveal effects in this group of old adults. We discuss implications for the comparison of results of eye-movement research based on multivariate analysis of corpus data with those from display-contingent manipulations of target words.

SWIFT explorations of age differences in eye movements during reading

by Reinhold Kliegl

Laubrock, J., Kliegl, R. & Engbert, R. (2006). SWIFT explorations of age differences in eye movements during reading. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 30, 872-884.

Research on eye movements in reading has made significant advances during the past few years, due to both experimental... more Research on eye movements in reading has made significant advances during the past few years, due to both experimental and computational research. Age effects have not been extensively studied, but the overall pattern suggests more quantitative than qualitative differences in fixation durations and fixation probabilities. Here we focus on age-differential effects of word frequency on reading time and on probabilities of skipping a word or regressing to previous ones. We present an overview of SWIFT [Engbert, R., Nuthmann, A., Richter, E.M., Kliegl, R., 2005. SWIFT: a dynamical model of saccade generation during reading. Psychological Review 112, 777–813], a fully implemented computational model of saccade generation and lexical processing during reading, based on spatially distributed processing over several words. Preliminary simulations of age differences recovered most, but not all experimental effects. Age differences in parameter estimates point towards an important role of visual acuity for oculomotor as well as lexical processing.

Age differences in working memory - The roles of storage and selective access

by Reinhold Kliegl

Oberauer, K., Wendland, M. & Kliegl, R. (2003). Age differences in working memory - The roles of storage and selective access. Memory & Cognition, 31(4), 563-569.

Twenty-four young (23 years) and 24 old (71 years) adults performed arithmetic tasks with working memory loads ranging... more Twenty-four young (23 years) and 24 old (71 years) adults performed arithmetic tasks with working memory loads ranging from 1 to 4. Age groups were equivalent in mean accuracy and speed of arithmetic operations under minimal working memory load, but old adults were slower than young with memory demands >1. Access to a new object in working memory as the basis of computation required additional time. This object-switching cost increased with increases in memory demand, but was unaffected by age, indicating that old adults have no deficit in selective access to working memory.

Resource limitations and process dissociations in individual differences research

by Reinhold Kliegl

Kliegl, R., Mayr, U. & Oberauer, K. (2000). Resource limitations and process dissociations in individual differences research. In U. von Hecker, S. Dutke & G. Sedek (Eds.), Generative mental processes and cognitive resources. Integrative research on adaptation and control (pp. 337-366). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

General resource limitations (such as processing speed) account for most of the age-related individual differences in... more General resource limitations (such as processing speed) account for most of the age-related individual differences in cognitive tasks. Empirical support for this position rests on analyses of systematic relations across experimental conditions and on mediator-based regression models across persons. The authors point out methodological problems with both approaches and propose an alternative called cognitive psychophysics, which determines resource demand across a wide range of performance accuracy. Results suggest that it is necessary to distinguish between different domains of cognitive processing that are affected not at all or to different degrees when people get older. The approach may also be useful for other individual difference variables.

Formal models of age differences in task-complexity effects

by Reinhold Kliegl

Kliegl, R., Krampe, R. T. & Mayr, U. (2003). Formal models of age differences in task-complexity effects. In U. M. Staudinger & U. Lindenberger (Eds.), Understanding human development. Dialogues with lifespan psychology (pp. 289-313). Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Sometimes, older adults perform just as well and even just as fast as younger adults - even in relatively complex... more Sometimes, older adults perform just as well and even just as fast as younger adults - even in relatively complex cognitive tasks tapping the "mechanics of cognition." The present chapter attempts to unravel the possible reasons for this astonishing phenomenon. In particular, it is argued that theoretically predicted age invariance under speeded task conditions constitutes the optimal baseline for delineating domains of functioning according to the severity of associated age differences. In the first part, the general issue of how process-specific effects can be delineated from general effects of aging in cognitive functions is addressed. The critical observation here is that very often an age difference is already present in an experimental condition meant to serve as a baseline for the assessment of an age difference in a cognitive process in a more complex condition. Experimental control techniques are proposed that may eliminate the interpretational ambiguity associated with such ordinal interactions. In the second and third parts, this approach is illustrated for research on movement timing and semantic memory access to demonstrate a clear delineation of processing domains with different degrees of age sensitivity. Although the research examples are from the field of cognitive aging, the proposal to eliminate baseline differences between quasi-experimental groups by means of experimental control should be useful as well for age contrasts in other segments of the lifespan (such as child development) and for comparative work involving other quasi-experimental variables (e.g., groups differing in health, social status, attitudes). A better understanding of basic constraints of the cognitive system will contribute to theoretical accounts of selection, optimization, and compensation, processes that have to operate within these constraints. Therefore, in the final section, the implications of age-related functional dissociations for an understanding of adaptive processes that operate throughout the lifespan are discussed.

Face memory skill acquisition

by Reinhold Kliegl

Kliegl, R., Philipp, D., Luckner, M. & Krampe, R. T. (2001). Face memory skill acquisition. In N. Charness, D. C. Parks & B. A. Sabel (Eds.), Communication, technology and aging. Opportunities and challenges for the future (pp. 169-186). New York: Springer.

Investigated the acquisition of face memory skills in older adults. In Experiment 1, 15 younger adults (aged 19-29... more Investigated the acquisition of face memory skills in older adults. In Experiment 1, 15 younger adults (aged 19-29 years) and 16 older adults (aged 65-80 years) completed 6 face memory training sessions, and 20 younger adults and 19 older adults served as controls. In Experiment 2, 8 younger adults (aged 20-28 years) and 8 older adults (aged 69-79 years) completed 11 face memory training sessions. In Experiment 3, 5 older adults (aged 69-77 years) completed 19 face memory training sessions with maximum individual coaching. Overall results show that younger adults score higher in the face-place task, and this difference increases from pretest to posttest. No transfer to other related tasks of the obtained skills can be reported. In conclusion, possible reasons for the results reported such as skill resilience or the development of compensatory strategies are discussed.

Timing, sequencing, and executive control in repetitive movement production

by Reinhold Kliegl

Krampe, R. T., Mayr, U. & Kliegl, R. (2005). Timing, sequencing, and executive control in repetitive movement production. Journal of Experimental Psychology - Human Perception and Performance, 31(3), 379-397.

Demonstrates that the timing and sequencing of target durations require low-level timing and executive control. 16... more Demonstrates that the timing and sequencing of target durations require low-level timing and executive control. 16 young (mean age = 19 years) and 16 older (mean age = 70 years) adults participated in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, individual mean-variance functions for low-level timing (isochronous tapping) and the sequencing of multiple targets (rhythm production) revealed (1) a dissociation of low-level timing and sequencing in both age groups, (2) negligible age differences for low-level timing, and (3) large age differences for sequencing. Experiment 2 supported the distinction between low-level timing and executive functions: Selection against a dominant rhythm and switching between rhythms impaired performances in both age groups and induced pronounced perseveration of the dominant pattern in older adults.

Constraints on language: Aging, grammar, and memory - concluding observations

by Reinhold Kliegl

Kliegl, R., & Kemper, S. (1999). Concluding observations (pp. 299-307). In S. Kemper & R. Kliegl (Eds.), Constraints on language: Aging, grammar, and memory (pp. 170-200). Springer US.

Testing age invariance in language processes

by Reinhold Kliegl

Kliegl, R., Mayr, U., Junker, M. & Fanselow, G. (1999). Testing age invariance in language processes. In S. Kemper & R. Kliegl (Eds.), Constraints on language: Aging, grammar, and memory (pp. 137-167). Springer: New York.
DOI: 10.1007/0-306-46902-2_6

We believe the methodological proposals in this chapter can help focus theoretical controversies about the role of age... more We believe the methodological proposals in this chapter can help focus theoretical controversies about the role of age in the processing of language. Of course (unfortunately), the experimental paradigms we propose do not substitute for good theory. Especially in the case of syntactic complexity, we apparently are only at the beginning of understanding the interplay of language-related and general cognitive mechanisms such as working memory or processing rate. Models tracing age differences to some form of general resource deficiency were based on data from experimental paradigms that frequently confounded task difficulty with task complexity. We are optimistic that experimental control of unspecific task difficulty is like removing a veil under which effects linked to theoretical notions of processing complexity will appear in a clear view.

Adult age effects of plausibility on memory: The role of time constraints during encoding

by Reinhold Kliegl

Thompson, L. A. & Kliegl, R. (1991). Adult age effects of plausibility on memory: The role of time constraints during encoding. Journal of Experimental Psychology - Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 17(3), 542-555.
http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=1991-27064-001

Presents the results of an experiment on the importance of training-induced schemata and encoding time on adult age... more Presents the results of an experiment on the importance of training-induced schemata and encoding time on adult age differences in recalling verbal material. Three experiments on mnemonic training were conducted, with 32 older adult subjects (65 to 87 years old) and 34 younger adult subjects (20 to 30 years of age). The results of Experiment 1 showed that highly plausible (schema-coherent) words were remembered better than words with low plausibility (schema-discrepant), in both age groups. With presentation times from 3 to 11 seconds, this difference was larger in the older adults than in the younger ones. In Experiment 2, with self-paced encoding, the older subjects took more time on the less plausible word pairs, but again retained less than the younger subjects. In Experiment 3, both age groups preferred to imagine highly plausible words as opposed to less plausible words, although this difference was more marked in the older subjects. The results show that it is harder for older adults than for younger adults to develop elaborate mental images of schema-discrepant information when encoding is temporally restricted. The discussion deals with the issue of age-related mental slowing in information processing.

Process dissociations in cognitive aging

by Reinhold Kliegl

Kliegl, R., Mayr, U. & Krampe, R. T. (1995). Process dissociations in cognitive aging. In M. Bergener, J.C. Brocklehurst, & S.I. Finkel (Ed.), Aging, health, and healing (S. 171-183). New York: Springer.

Presents an overview of previous studies investigating process dissociations within the domain of fluid intelligence... more Presents an overview of previous studies investigating process dissociations within the domain of fluid intelligence as a result of cognitive aging. Past research has focused on the following topics: (1) the task-specificity of general slowing down in older individuals, (2) age differences in criterion-referenced presentation times, (3) time-accuracy functions and iso-acuracy state traces, (4) low and high demands on coordinating information in working memory, and (5) proactive interference in the acquisition of new versus the revision of old knowledge. All of the reported studies used the conservative criterion of proportional rather than absolute age differences in subjects. Overall, the reviewed findings suggest 3 levels of process dissociation that result from cognitive aging. Level 1 pertains to the distinction between fluid and crystallized abilities, level 2 compares search processes and episodic memory, and level 3 addresses the aspect of revising memory versus acquiring new knowledge content.