Psychology and Aging最新文献

Neuroimaging studies have shown that aging alters the brain mechanisms underlying attentional control, even when behavioral performance is equivalent between younger and older adults. Instead of attributing these changes to compensatory mechanisms, we investigated whether age-related neuromodulatory changes in the locus coeruleus-noradrenaline (LC-NA) system are underlying these effects. To test whether aging leads to LC-NA system hyperactivity, we combined two methodological approaches: an oculomotor visual search task to assess eye movements and the threat of unpredictable electric shock paradigm to induce sustained arousal. Using pupillometry, we found that arousal reduced evoked pupil responses in both age groups, demonstrating the expected pattern of lower phasic noradrenergic activity under arousal. Young adults made significantly more first fixations to the physically salient distractor under threat of shock compared to baseline conditions, unlike in older adults with no effect. This modulation of attentional priority was only observable immediately following shock delivery and dissipated over time. Additionally, we found moderate evidence supporting the null hypothesis that arousal does not modulate the speed of attention processing in either age group. These results suggest that arousal selectively modulates attentional priority maps in the early visual cortex but does not influence broader interactions across higher order attentional networks. While first fixation measures revealed age-related differences consistent with the hypothesis of LC-NA system hyperactivity in aging, pupillometry and processing speed measures showed age-equivalent effects. Together, these findings highlight the potential for age-related changes in the LC-NA system to modulate mechanisms of attentional control and demonstrate the utility of eye movement measures as a promising tool to track changes across the adult lifespan. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Navigational skills are essential for interacting with our environment, supported by multiple types of spatial representations. We investigated age-related differences in spatial memory using a virtual reality task that manipulated viewpoints between the encoding and retrieval of one or four-object locations. The task investigates compensatory mechanisms in aging, specifically how spatial updating via self-motion affects spatial memory. We tested 21 young adults (ages 19-36) and 23 older adults (ages 63-80). The task involved three movement conditions: same-viewpoint condition, where participants walked away and returned to the same viewpoint; shifted-viewpoint (walking) condition where participants walked to a different viewpoint, enabling continuous updates of their egocentric representations through self-motion; and shifted-viewpoint (teleport) condition where participants teleported to the other viewpoint, involving both a virtual translation and rotation of the participant's view. Retrieval was tested by asking participants to place each object at its previously seen location. Average displacement error was affected by age group, object configuration, and movement condition, with an interaction between age and movement condition. Differences in movement conditions were primarily driven by older participants, who were most accurate from the same viewpoint. In shifted-viewpoint conditions, teleportation-where self-motion cues were absent-led to significantly greater errors than walking in the older group. Our results highlight the role of spatial updating in supporting spatial memory and suggest that age-related decline in allocentric representations can be mitigated by continuous updating of egocentric representations by self-motion. We speculate that the use of spatial updating might be impaired early in the progression to Alzheimer's dementia due to entorhinal cortical pathology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

A leading hypothesis in the field of aging and navigation is that older adults are selectively impaired on tasks that require allocentric (landmark-based) strategies to navigate, resulting in a shift toward more egocentric (self-based) strategies. However, most evidence in humans comes from studies that restrict body-based sensorimotor cues that are essential to both egocentric and allocentric navigation. In the present study, young and older adults navigated a virtual environment in each of two conditions: a stationary desktop condition that relied on visual input and an immersive condition that enabled unrestricted ambulation and sensorimotor feedback during navigation. Both age groups performed worse when initially learning locations from novel compared with familiar locations-often considered a hallmark of allocentric navigation. The cost of switching from familiar to novel start locations was equal between age groups, pointing to a null effect of age on allocentric strategies. Older adults also employed distal landmarks to a comparable extent to young adults, suggesting that landmark-dependent strategies did not differ by age. However, older adults were more likely to replicate previously taken paths, potentially indicative of a preference for egocentric strategies. The path replication effect was significantly attenuated in the immersive condition, particularly in the presence of geometric boundary cues that could be used to infer distance. Age differences in spatial navigation may therefore be driven in part by a selective bias for navigating familiar routes, although these differences were lessened in the presence of multimodal visual and sensorimotor cues. The present study highlights that navigation is a complex cognitive construct that draws on multiple parallel systems and strategies that cannot be easily explained by a simple allocentric-egocentric dichotomy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

When young adults complete a pretest (e.g., star-?) before to-be-learned material is studied (e.g., star-night), their recall of the material is typically enhanced on a subsequent final test compared to material studied without initial pretesting. The present two experiments investigated whether this pretesting effect arises also in older adults and is modulated in size when repeated guessing attempts are made during pretesting. Sixty young adults (mean age = 24.5 years) and 60 older adults (mean age = 68.6 years) took part in Experiment 1, while 54 young adults (mean age = 21.8 years) and 54 older adults (mean age = 66.6 years) took part in Experiment 2. Results showed that, like young adults, older adults can benefit from a single guessing attempt made during pretesting, both when weakly associated word pairs (Experiment 1) and prose passages (Experiment 2) were used as study material. However, multiple guessing attempts during pretesting led to an additional recall benefit when word pairs but not when prose passages had been studied. Experiment 2 also examined possible transfer effects of pretesting and showed a lack of transfer to previously studied but untested information, for both young and older adults. The results are discussed with respect to prominent accounts of the pretesting effect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

This study examined how prefrontal overactivation in older adults relates to cognitive performance across systematically varied task demands, testing predictions from major neural compensation theories. Using a visual discrimination paradigm, we parametrically manipulated perceptual load, discrimination precision, and response rule complexity. Participants included younger (N = 36; aged 19-33) and older adults (N = 36; aged 56-82). Task performance was measured using inverse efficiency scores (IES), and functional magnetic resonance imaging assessed brain activation. Older adults demonstrated disproportionately higher IES, especially under the most complex condition, suggesting reduced efficiency with rising demand. fMRI revealed widespread frontoparietal network activation differences, with older adults showing increased recruitment of frontal regions compared with younger adults, especially at higher task demands. Critically, prefrontal overactivation in older adults correlated negatively with performance at the highest demand level, indicating capacity-limited compensation. Additionally, older adults exhibited reduced default mode network suppression and diminished dorsal attention network recruitment, both of which were associated with poorer task performance. These findings support the compensation-related utilization of neural circuits hypothesis, which predicts a transition from adaptive to inefficient recruitment as cognitive demands increase. They also align with broader frameworks such as the posterior-anterior shift in aging and the revised scaffolding theory of aging and cognition, emphasizing the role of task complexity in shaping compensatory patterns. Overall, the adaptiveness of neural overactivation in older adults appears to depend on its relationship to both task demands and behavioral performance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The Iowa Gambling Task is a common tool for assessing complex decision making in healthy adults and clinical populations. Previous work has found that performance varies among younger adults, cognitively healthy older adults, and individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a syndrome often precedes dementia. However, performance on the task depends on many factors, including risk preference, sensitivity to gains and losses, and memory for past outcomes, which makes it difficult to understand what causes these differences. Here, we fit a computational cognitive model to the data which allows us to attribute differences in behavior to specific cognitive mechanisms. Experiment 1 (N = 90) compares cognitively healthy older adults to those with MCI, while Experiment 2 (N = 1,645) compares healthy adults of all ages. We find that healthy older adults and those with MCI exhibit different profiles in the task. Healthy aging is associated with a larger learning rates (we attribute to a recency bias), use of a perseverative strategy, and increased sensitivity to gains over losses. Individuals with MCI learned at a slower rate, but showed no qualitative differences in task strategy. The results have implications for understanding why decision making is impaired in the earliest clinical phases of cognitive decline. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

This study investigated the role of cumulative automatization in supporting complex logical reasoning, with a specific focus on age-related differences between younger and older adults. Grounded in the cumulative and emerging automatic deficit model, the research explores how the gradual automatization of cognitive subroutines influences higher order problem-solving abilities. Participants (N = 68), divided into two age groups, completed associative learning tasks using Chinese ideograms followed by inductive reasoning problems of increasing complexity. Behavioral data revealed that greater automatization-measured by faster reaction times, fewer errors, and reduced attempts-facilitates more efficient cognitive processing. While older adults showed slower acquisition and higher cognitive load during the learning phases, their performance in complex reasoning tasks aligned with that of younger participants once automatization was achieved. These results suggest that automatization acts as a cognitive buffer, enhancing reasoning efficiency by offloading controlled processes. Findings emphasize the importance of targeting automatization in cognitive training programs, especially in aging populations, and support a dynamic model of interaction between automatic and controlled cognitive mechanisms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotion control beliefs reflect the extent to which people believe their emotions can and should be controlled and have been linked to psychological well-being. However, research has yet to examine age-related differences in these beliefs and their daily associations with well-being. Accordingly, the present research examines age differences in daily emotion control beliefs and their within-person associations with positive and negative affect. To do so, we used 14-day daily diary data from an adult community sample (younger adults: 18-36 years old, N = 72; older adults: 66-92 years old, N = 66). The results revealed that older adults reported higher average can emotion control beliefs than younger adults, but no age differences were observed for average should emotion control beliefs. Further, multilevel models revealed that, in general, having stronger beliefs that one can control their emotions was associated with higher positive affect and lower negative affect across age, whereas having stronger beliefs that one should control their emotions was only associated with higher negative affect in younger adults. Examining daily variations, while both age groups also experienced significant increases in positive affect and decreases in negative affect on days they believed they could control their emotion more than usual, the daily association with positive affect was stronger among young adults. Further, younger, but not older, adults experienced decreases in positive affect and increases in negative affect on days in which they believed they should control their emotions more than usual, while older adults' affect did not significantly change. These findings add to theory and research on lifespan development and emotional aging by highlighting that emotion control beliefs are differentially associated with well-being, and these associations change across the adult lifespan. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Many individuals believe that they can detect lies; however, empirical evidence indicates the opposite: Humans are poor lie detectors. This overestimation of lie detection performance has predominantly been studied in young adults. Yet older adults might exhibit such biases to an even higher extent due to their age-related changes in visual and cognitive processing. Accordingly, we tested 18- to 36-year-old (n = 221) and 55- to 91-year-old (n = 109) adults in their (a) self-reported lie detection performance, (b) actual lie detection performance, (c) confidence in their judgments, and (d) lie detection cues they normally rely on. Lie detection was assessed based on videos of a person being truthful or lying when describing a picture. This study showed that older and younger adults did not differ in their actual and self-reported lie detection performances. However, older adults seemed more realistic about their performance in comparison to others and confident with their decisions. The predicted age-related differences were also not found. Both groups overestimated their self-reported lie detection performance around chance level and showed the same tendency to rely more on nonverbal than verbal cues. For age differences, older adults (a) reported higher confidence in their lie detection judgements, (b) performed lower in self-reported lie detection, and (c) used fewer cues to detect lies. Future studies should enhance the ecological validity of the study material, providing more context information and creating higher stakes for participants. Overall, understanding lie detection performance and biases across the lifespan can inform interventions aimed at improving deception detection accuracy across different age groups. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Affect dynamics are key indicators of health and well-being across adulthood, yet little is known about their longitudinal changes and correlates. Combining mean levels and daily variability, this study examined latent profiles of affect dynamics and patterns of profile transitions over a 10-year span among middle-aged and older adults. We examined longitudinal data from the Midlife in the United States study, consisting of the second and third waves of daily diary assessments (National Study of Daily Experiences). The analytic sample included 950 U.S. adults with 7,222 days for Wave 2 and 7,580 days for Wave 3 (mean age at Wave 2 = 53 years, range: 34-81; 58% women; 86% White). Two affect dynamic indicators-affective variability and affect mean levels-were derived from eight daily dairy interviews at each wave. Latent profile analyses identified three profiles of affect dynamics: stable positivity, moderately variable, and highly variable negativity. Latent transition analysis revealed that all profiles exhibited moderate transition stability, with individuals generally transitioning toward less variable affectivity profiles 10 years later. Older age was associated with more stable and favorable affectivity profiles, whereas higher depressive symptoms and greater number of chronic conditions were associated with more variable and unfavorable affectivity profiles. These findings highlight the dual aspects of aging in affective well-being, including the benefits of improved affective stability and regulation with age and persistent vulnerabilities contributing to individual differences in affect dynamics. Our study underscores the importance of examining multiple affect dynamic indicators simultaneously to capture the complexity of longitudinal changes in affect dynamics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).