Schmitt Hannah, Kray Jutta, Ferdinand Nicola K
Department of Psychology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2017 Nov 9;8:1969. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01969. eCollection 2017.
A number of aging studies suggest that older adults process positive and negative information differently. For instance, the socioemotional selectivity theory postulates that older adults preferably process positive information in service of emotional well-being (Reed and Carstensen, 2012). Moreover, recent research has started to investigate whether incentives like gains or losses can influence cognitive control in an ongoing task. In an earlier study (Schmitt et al., 2015), we examined whether incentive cues, indicating potential monetary gains, losses, or neutral outcomes for good performance in the following trial, would influence older adults' ability to exert cognitive control. Cognitive control was measured in an AX-Continuous-Performance-Task (AX-CPT) in which participants had to select their responses to probe stimuli depending on a preceding context cue. In this study, we did not find support for a positivity effect in older adults, but both gains and losses led to enhanced context processing. As the trial-wise presentation mode may be too demanding on cognitive resources for such a bias to occur, the main goal of the present study was to examine whether motivational mindsets, induced by block-wise presentation of incentives, would result in a positivity effect. For this reason, we examined 17 older participants (65-76 years) in the AX-CPT using a block-wise presentation of incentive cues and compared them to 18 older adults (69-78 years) with the trial-wise presentation mode from our earlier study (Schmitt et al., 2015). Event-related potentials were recorded to the onset of the motivational cue and during the AX-CPT. Our results show that (a) older adults initially process cues signaling potential losses more strongly, but later during the AX-CPT invest more cognitive resources in preparatory processes like context updating in conditions with potential gains, and (b) block-wise and trial-wise presentation of incentive cues differentially influenced cognitive control. When incentives were presented block-wise, the above described valence effects were consistently found. In contrast, when incentives were presented trial-wise, the effects were mixed and salience as well as valence effects can be obtained. Hence, how positive and negative incentive cues influence cognitive control in older adults is dependent on demands of cue processing.
一些衰老研究表明，老年人处理积极和消极信息的方式有所不同。例如，社会情感选择性理论假设，老年人更倾向于处理积极信息以促进情绪健康（里德和卡斯滕森，2012年）。此外，最近的研究开始探讨诸如收益或损失等激励因素是否会影响正在进行的任务中的认知控制。在一项早期研究（施密特等人，2015年）中，我们研究了在接下来的试验中表明潜在金钱收益、损失或中性结果的激励线索是否会影响老年人发挥认知控制的能力。认知控制是在AX连续性能任务（AX-CPT）中进行测量的，在该任务中，参与者必须根据之前的情境线索选择对探测刺激的反应。在这项研究中，我们没有发现老年人存在积极效应的证据，但收益和损失都导致了情境处理的增强。由于逐次试验的呈现模式可能对认知资源要求过高，以至于这种偏差无法出现，本研究的主要目的是检验由逐块呈现激励因素所诱发的动机心态是否会导致积极效应。出于这个原因，我们在AX-CPT中使用逐块呈现激励线索的方式对17名老年参与者（65 - 76岁）进行了研究，并将他们与我们早期研究（施密特等人，2015年）中采用逐次试验呈现模式的18名老年人（69 - 78岁）进行了比较。记录了与动机线索开始以及AX-CPT期间相关的事件相关电位。我们的结果表明：（a）老年人最初对表明潜在损失的线索处理更强烈，但在AX-CPT后期，在有潜在收益的情况下，会在诸如情境更新等准备过程中投入更多认知资源；（b）激励线索的逐块呈现和逐次试验呈现对认知控制有不同的影响。当激励因素逐块呈现时，始终能发现上述效价效应。相反，当激励因素逐次试验呈现时，效果则是混合的，并且可以获得显著性以及效价效应。因此，积极和消极激励线索如何影响老年人的认知控制取决于线索处理的要求。
