Institute of Psychology & Courant Research Centre 'Evolution of Social Behaviour' University of Göttingen, Germany.
Br J Psychol. 2012 Feb;103(1):58-72. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02040.x. Epub 2011 May 20.
Following up on existing, mixed findings in the literature on social cognition in old age different aspects of theory of mind were investigated in younger and older adults. In line with some previous findings, older participants--though matched with the younger ones on crystallized abilities--performed significantly worse both on tasks requiring the ascription of complex intentional attitudes to story protagonists and on tasks of recognizing subtle emotional expressions from video displays. Control analyses showed, however, that these deficits are partly explained by domain-general declines in processing speed and executive function. The implications of these findings for the nature of social cognition and its fate in old age are discussed.
针对老年人社会认知领域现有文献中存在的混合研究结果，本研究调查了年轻和老年成年人在心理理论不同方面的情况。与之前的一些研究结果一致，尽管与年轻参与者在晶体智力方面相匹配，但年长参与者在需要将复杂意向态度归因于故事主角的任务和从视频显示中识别微妙情感表达的任务中表现明显更差。然而，控制分析表明，这些缺陷部分可以用加工速度和执行功能的一般领域衰退来解释。讨论了这些发现对社会认知的本质及其在老年中的命运的影响。
