applied themes in ageing Flashcards

1
Q

mental exercise

A

e.g. use of brain training apps to increase IQ or get better outcomes

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2
Q

intuitive reasoning behind mental exercise

A

idea that brain can be trained to become more mentally fit

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3
Q

theoretical reasoning behind mental exercise

A

WM capacity constrains a wide range of cognitive functions including fluid intelligence (Gf)

expanding WM capacity should benefit the cognitive functions that it constrains

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4
Q

correlational/description mental exercise studies types (2)

A

cross-sectional → reported mental exercise-cognition relations at a single time point

longitudinal → baseline reported mental exercise and cognition gains at later time points

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5
Q

interventions on mental exercise studies type - what can this show

A

longitudinal → immediate and long-term effects of mental exercise on cognition vs control

only way to establish a clear causal role of mental exercise on cognition is using intervention methods

effects immediately after intervention aren’t necessarily informative about age-related changes in mental ability that occur over years/decades

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6
Q

Singh-Manoux et al (2003) - study of cognition and leisure activities

objectives of study
measures of cognitive ability (5)
results
discussion

A

summary
high cognitive leisure activities = high cognitive ability (vice versa same for low)
this is independent of age, education and SES

therefore relationship between mental exercise and cog ability - don’t know direction

study

  • survey of over 10,000 people about variety of issue with health and SES and leisure activities
  • sorted leisure activities by level of cognitive effort and by whether they were individual or social
  • researched whether activities that were high cognitive effort related to their cognitive abilities

tasks to measure cognitive abilities:

  • verbal memory - 20 word free recall test
  • AH4-I → series of 65 items (verbal + maths) - inductive reasoning to identify patterns and infer principles and rules
  • Mill Hill → vocab test
  • Semantic fluency → e.g. come up with as many animal words as possible in 1 min
  • Phonemic fluency → e.g. come up with as many “s” words as possible in 1 min

results:

  • stronger positive correlations between high cognitive leisure activities and cognitive ability
  • lower correlations between cognitive ability and low cognitive effort leisure activities
  • positive association between high cognitive effort leisure activities and ability independent of age, education, and SES

discussion:

this gives evidence for relationship between mental exercise and cognitive ability → but don’t know direction of causation e.g. cognitive better people do more taxing activities because they are able to

or could be due to another factor e.g. SES

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7
Q

differential preservation hypothesis

A

mental activity protects against age-related decline in mental ability

supports idea of causative role of mental exercise to minimise cognitive decline in older age

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8
Q

preserved differentiation hypothesis

A

main effects across age - nothing special about cumulative activity that differentially boosts performance later in life

previous mental ability effects later - therefore no point starting mental exercise with older

lack of interactions between age and mental exercise

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9
Q

methodological issues in mental training literature (3)

A

active vs passive control groups:

  • control group shouldn’t just do nothing - make sure placebo is realistic enough → need to make sure meaningful mental exercise is what is measured

publication bias:

  • publish more research with a positive or significant outcome rather than those that didn’t

adaptive procedures - adjusting for task difficulty:

  • if you do multiple of same training sessions that don’t get harder you’re likely to get better at it → therefore it needs to adapt with difficulty
  • make sure people are always performing at their maximum not just passing a level and staying there - never can train above this point if it doesn’t get harder
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10
Q

theoretical issues in mental training literature

A

what is being trained exactly

e.g. not just WM in general - which component specifically is being trained and can this improve with age

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11
Q

practical issues with mental training literature (3)

A

maintenance of training gains over long-term:

  • does mental exercise have to continue being done to maintain this

initial cognitive ability as moderator of intervention:

  • do the “rich get richer”

near and far transfer effects:

  • complete a WM task
  • near transfer → complete a similar WM task
  • medium transfer → complete a task that requires similar concepts to WM
  • far transfer → reasoning task (requires fluid intelligence not WM)
  • e.g. doing a sudoku and the ability to find your keys = far transfer → not very similar cognitive abilities in these, therefore practicing sudoku wouldn’t improve the key finding abilities

training and improving core cognitive constructs → does this actually improve far transfer abilities or not?

but will people be better at more similar tasks when they’ve trained one WM task

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12
Q

use of transfer tasks with WM

A

to measure whether cognitive abilities are improved or just ability to complete a specific task

if abilities are improved then performance on other tasks should improve too

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13
Q

Kerbach and Verhaeghen (2014) - near and far transfer study with training

measures (4)
results
limitations

A

meta-analysis of training tasks

measures:

  • gains in target task by training groups
  • gains in target task by active and passive control groups
  • near transfer gains
  • far transfer gains
    measured in effect size

results:

  • training gains in both trained task as well as evidence of near and far transfer was found
  • no age difference in effectiveness of training programs - benefits in younger and older adults

limitations

training effects may be exaggerated in the above study:

  • far transfer = reasoning and task-switching merged
  • no correction for baseline differences in groups

unclear which studies were used in this analysis - 17 total:

  • 2 without control group
  • 1 based on same sample used in other study
  • 2 studies omitted
  • 1 outlier found

found huge benefits of training but sample was very small

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14
Q

updated meta-analysis of Kerbach and Verhaeghen (2014) near and far transfer with training study

A

found very little gains at all and modest far transfer results - very few studies properly done

plotted against change in training conditions compared to control conditions

shows performance gains of mental exercise over controls in older adulthood

due to lack of control groups and small samples

effects of mental exercise have been exaggerated

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15
Q

recent meta-analysis of training tasks (2 studies)

A

effectiveness of mental exercise (e.g. training WM) in terms of far transfer is controversial → only clear benefits for trained tasks

Sala et al (2019)

large effect of intervention for trained tasks

smaller effects for near and far transfer tasks → null when using studies only with active controls

Hou et al (nd)

significant long term effects of intervention on updating, shifting, inhibition, and maintenance

weaker or null effects for far transfer tasks

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16
Q

lifestyle and cognitive abilities

A

importance of high-cognitive leisure activities in relation to cognitive abilities

maybe actually about encouraging an engaging and active lifestyle instead of training cognitive tasks

17
Q

WHO healthy ageing definition

A

sustaining functional ability in everyday life – being mobile, building/maintaining relationships, and lifelong learning

18
Q

Rowe and Kahn (1987) - characteristics of successful ageing

A

high cog and physical function

low probability of disease and disability

active engagement in life

19
Q

adult leisure activities with ageing (3)

A

related to 3 indicators of successful ageing (correlational studies):
* cognitive function
* physical function
* mental health

sports activities related to self-reported everyday failures

gaming activities related to test-based everyday performance

20
Q

training lifestyles to improve cognitive abilities studies

aim
intervention phase (2 engagement types)
test phase (5 tests)
prediction
results

A

Park et al (2013)

tried to train lifestyles to enhance active and engaged lifestyles in older adults (age 60-90)

intervention phase:
* productive engagement: photo, quilt, dual
* receptive engagement: social (low cognitive demand), placebo (low social and cognitive demand); no contact control

beware social effects could confound - placebo group could correct for this

first five conditions required 15 hr/week structured activities for 3 months

test phase:
* cognitive battery (far transfer)
* processing speed (digit comparison)
* mental control (Flanker tasks)
* episodic memory (immediate and delayed recall and recognition memory)
* visuospatial processing (CANTAB spatial memory task, Stockings of Cambridge Task, modified Raven’s)

prediction
improved cognition in productive engagement conditions vs. receptive engagement conditions
especially such that photo shows better verbal memory and quilt shows better visuospatial abilities

results:

corrected for multiple comparisons

episodic memory showed best benefits from photography lifestyle group - but less going on

why would EM be selectively benefitted → theory isn’t clear here

21
Q

associative binding effect

A

The ability to connect the people, places, and objects comprising an event into a coherent memory

requirement for an episodic memory to include information not only about individual elements of an experience but also about the way in which those elements are linked together

22
Q

associative binding deficit in older adults

A

inability to remember the details of prior episodes results from a failure to create and retrieve links between individual items and the contexts in which they appeared during encoding.

23
Q

Salthouse (2011) - CEOs and ageing

A

fortune 500 CEOs are over-represented in middle/old age
therefore age-related declines can occur in important cognitive abilities without major consequences for functioning in society

24
Q

age and job correlations

A

age is negatively correlated with cognitive constructs in lab setting
age shows no relationship with other job-related variables that require these cognitive constructs

25
Q

areas where older adults excel (4 - list)

A

semantic memory
concern for others
wisdom
expertise

26
Q

older adults excel: concern for others

A
  • negative behavioural tendencies decline through adulthood
  • prosocial traits increase in adulthood
  • charitable giving and volunteering increases up to age 70
  • differences observed even when controlling for wealth - poor people give proportionally more than rich people
  • practical reasons - time and financial resources - and change in approach to cost-benefit ratio of prosocial behaviour
27
Q

older adults excel: wisdom

A

reflecting on life could make you realise you didn’t do what you had planned to

wisdom isn’t technical or intellectual knowledge - combines cognition, emotion, motivation

however, study hasn’t found correlation between wisdom and age
* maybe from cohort effects
* maybe as study was cross sectional
* task relevance may have been an issue - lacks real life experience

28
Q

older adults excel: wisdom - - Berlin wisdom paradigm

A

Baltes and Smith (1990)

5 criteria to describe expert knowledge:

factual knowledge → about human nature and life

procedural knowledge → ways of dealing with fundamental questions about meaning and conduct of life

life-span contextualism → deep understanding about contexts of life problems, how these contexts are related and how they change over time

value relativism and tolerance → acknowledge individual and cultural differences in values of life priorities

awareness and management of uncertainty → understand life decision, evaluations, and plans are never free of uncertainty - do all that you can to avoid resignation

29
Q

older adults excel: wisdom
Thomas and Kunzmann (2013) - advice to video clips

A

video clips depicting life problems concerning marital conflict and suicide

pilot study confirmed marital conflict was more relevant to younger adults → they performed better (showed better wisdom) on this and gave better advice compared to older adults

similar wisdom on suicide group as neither older or younger had more specific experience with it

not just general wisdom - comes from life experiences

30
Q

older adults excel: expertise

A

lots of years of practice

enhanced semantic memory in older age

enhanced wisdom in own domain - had opportunity to develop specific skills and expertise

Perhaps prior knowledge can facilitate the associative binding necessary for a task, especially for seemingly arbitrarily paired information

31
Q

older adults excel: expertise
chess study

A

Strittmatter et al (2020)

study of 125 years and over 24000 chess games

compared individual moves in each game against the “optimal” move suggested by a computer

performance increases until early 20s and plateaus up to 35 years and then declines

also overall increase in performance with more years of chess being played → improvements with new generations

32
Q

older adults excel: expertise
number-object-location study

A

YA vs OA vs retired accountants studied info in format:
2 digit - object - location
e.g. 97 hotels in sheffield
e.g. 68 nails in a bowl

different relatedness between info

cued recall test - locations presented one at a time, had to recall the number and object

results:
significant 3-way interaction:
OA recalled less than YA when info was numerical
limited differences when info was related

retired accountants had excellent numerical memory vs OAs and same as YAs – protects against age related differences

object recall was still better for YAs - some divergent validity that expertise is specific to particular domain

33
Q

how to improve expertise
number-object-location study

A

add a group of YA accountants so there’s 4 groups:

YA
YA accountants
OA
OA accountants

34
Q

older adults excel: expertise
Taylor et al (2005) - air traffic

A

found expertise doesn’t protect against age-related decline in avian communication

study with 3 levels of expertise

participants completed 5 flight simulations with recorded messages speaking at different speeds

age, expertise, and WM impacted performance with differing task speed/difficulty

age = decrease ability
expertise = increase ability
WM = biggest increase in ability

no interaction between these variables

  • 75% age differences due to WM
  • controlling for WM and expertise, only 4% due to age
35
Q

Salthouse 2011 - job performance and age correlations

A

rarely need to act at optimum - therefore declines not often noticed

shift to reliance on accumulated knowledge with age

  • from fluid to crystalised ability

cognition only accounts for 25% variance in job performance

individual can make accommodations to conceal deficits e.g. don’t drive in rush hour when you become worse at driving