scholarly journals Greater Emotional Gain from Giving in Older Adults: Age-Related Positivity Bias in Charitable Giving

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pär Bjälkebring ◽  
Daniel Västfjäll ◽  
Stephan Dickert ◽  
Paul Slovic
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Charitable Giving ◽  
Positivity Bias ◽  
Age Related

scholarly journals Optimistic update bias increases in older age

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (9) ◽  
pp. 2003-2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Chowdhury ◽  
T. Sharot ◽  
T. Wolfe ◽  
E. Düzel ◽  
R. J. Dolan
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Older Age ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Subjective Rating ◽  
Grey Matter Volume ◽  
Negative Events ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Positivity Bias ◽  
Age Related

BackgroundHealthy older adults report greater well-being and life satisfaction than their younger counterparts. One potential explanation for this is enhanced optimism. We tested the influence of age on optimistic and pessimistic beliefs about the future and the associated structural neural correlates.MethodEighteen young and 18 healthy older adults performed a belief updating paradigm, measuring differences in updating beliefs for desirable and undesirable information about future negative events. These measures were related to regional brain volume, focusing on the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) because this region is strongly linked to a positivity bias in older age.ResultsWe demonstrate an age-related reduction in updating beliefs when older adults are faced with undesirable, but not desirable, information about negative events. This greater ‘update bias’ in older age persisted even after controlling for a variety of variables including subjective rating scales and poorer overall memory. A structural brain correlate of this greater ‘update bias’ was evident in greater grey matter volume in the dorsal ACC in older but not in young adults.ConclusionsWe show a greater update bias in healthy older age. The link between this bias and relative volume of the ACC suggests a shared mechanism with an age-related positivity bias. Older adults frequently have to make important decisions relating to personal, health and financial issues. Our findings have wider behavioural implications in these contexts because an enhanced optimistic update bias may skew such real-world decision making.

Age-Related Differences in Processing Dynamic Information to Identify Vowel Quality

1992 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 892-902 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Allen Fox ◽  
Lida G. Wall ◽  
Jeanne Gokcen
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Perceptual Cues ◽  
Dynamic Information ◽  
Process Dynamic ◽  
Center Condition ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Control Version ◽  
Older Subjects ◽  
Whole Word

This study examined age-related differences in the use of dynamic acoustic information (in the form of formant transitions) to identify vowel quality in CVCs. Two versions of 61 naturally produced, commonly occurring, monosyllabic English words were created: a control version (the unmodified whole word) and a silent-center version (in which approximately 62% of the medial vowel was replaced by silence). A group of normal-hearing young adults (19–25 years old) and older adults (61–75 years old) identified these tokens. The older subjects were found to be significantly worse than the younger subjects at identifying the medial vowel and the initial and final consonants in the silent-center condition. These results support the hypothesis of an age-related decrement in the ability to process dynamic perceptual cues in the perception of vowel quality.

Activity Engagement in Cognitive Aging: A Review of the Evidence

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yvonne Rogalski ◽  
Muriel Quintana
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Decline ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
Omega 3 ◽  
Neuroprotective Effects ◽  
Activity Engagement ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Age Related Cognitive Decline

The population of older adults is rapidly increasing, as is the number and type of products and interventions proposed to prevent or reduce the risk of age-related cognitive decline. Advocacy and prevention are part of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s (ASHA’s) scope of practice documents, and speech-language pathologists must have basic awareness of the evidence contributing to healthy cognitive aging. In this article, we provide a brief overview outlining the evidence on activity engagement and its effects on cognition in older adults. We explore the current evidence around the activities of eating and drinking with a discussion on the potential benefits of omega-3 fatty acids, polyphenols, alcohol, and coffee. We investigate the evidence on the hypothesized neuroprotective effects of social activity, the evidence on computerized cognitive training, and the emerging behavioral and neuroimaging evidence on physical activity. We conclude that actively aging using a combination of several strategies may be our best line of defense against cognitive decline.

Inefficient Encoding as an Explanation for Age-Related Deficits in Recollection-Based Processing

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 148-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Friedman ◽  
Ray Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Semantic Retrieval ◽  
Age Related ◽  
The Face ◽  
Episodic Memories

A cardinal feature of aging is a decline in episodic memory (EM). Nevertheless, there is evidence that some older adults may be able to “compensate” for failures in recollection-based processing by recruiting brain regions and cognitive processes not normally recruited by the young. We review the evidence suggesting that age-related declines in EM performance and recollection-related brain activity (left-parietal EM effect; LPEM) are due to altered processing at encoding. We describe results from our laboratory on differences in encoding- and retrieval-related activity between young and older adults. We then show that, relative to the young, in older adults brain activity at encoding is reduced over a brain region believed to be crucial for successful semantic elaboration in a 400–1,400-ms interval (left inferior prefrontal cortex, LIPFC; Johnson, Nessler, & Friedman, 2013 ; Nessler, Friedman, Johnson, & Bersick, 2007 ; Nessler, Johnson, Bersick, & Friedman, 2006 ). This reduced brain activity is associated with diminished subsequent recognition-memory performance and the LPEM at retrieval. We provide evidence for this premise by demonstrating that disrupting encoding-related processes during this 400–1,400-ms interval in young adults affords causal support for the hypothesis that the reduction over LIPFC during encoding produces the hallmarks of an age-related EM deficit: normal semantic retrieval at encoding, reduced subsequent episodic recognition accuracy, free recall, and the LPEM. Finally, we show that the reduced LPEM in young adults is associated with “additional” brain activity over similar brain areas as those activated when older adults show deficient retrieval. Hence, rather than supporting the compensation hypothesis, these data are more consistent with the scaffolding hypothesis, in which the recruitment of additional cognitive processes is an adaptive response across the life span in the face of momentary increases in task demand due to poorly-encoded episodic memories.

Age-Related Decline in Emotional Prosody Discrimination

2014 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel L. C. Mitchell ◽  
Rachel A. Kingston
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Auditory Perception ◽  
Duration Discrimination ◽  
Pitch Perception ◽  
Sensory Level ◽  
Emotional Prosody ◽  
Processing Stage ◽  
Acoustic Characteristics ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Level Of Processing

It is now accepted that older adults have difficulty recognizing prosodic emotion cues, but it is not clear at what processing stage this ability breaks down. We manipulated the acoustic characteristics of tones in pitch, amplitude, and duration discrimination tasks to assess whether impaired basic auditory perception coexisted with our previously demonstrated age-related prosodic emotion perception impairment. It was found that pitch perception was particularly impaired in older adults, and that it displayed the strongest correlation with prosodic emotion discrimination. We conclude that an important cause of age-related impairment in prosodic emotion comprehension exists at the fundamental sensory level of processing.

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.

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.

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