Hughes MacKenzie L, Neupert Shevaun D, Pearman Ann
School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Department of Psychology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA.
Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn. 2025 Mar;32(2):193-206. doi: 10.1080/13825585.2024.2366033. Epub 2024 Jun 13.
This study examined age differences in effort devoted to completing cognitively demanding tasks. Fifty-two younger adults ages 18-30 years ( = 21.19) and 57 older adults ages 61-93 years ( = 76.56) completed a series of memory tests. Following each test, participants rated the test's difficulty and had their blood pressure measured. Effort was indexed by systolic blood pressure response (SBP-R) with greater increases in SBP-R reflecting more effort. Multilevel modeling was used to examine age differences in the intraindividual association between trial-level subjective task difficulty and trial-level effort. Results showed that increases in task difficulty were significantly related to decreases in SBP-R for the older but not younger adults, suggesting the older adults disengaged from the tests they perceived as highly difficult. Findings support Selective Engagement Theory (Hess, 2014), which suggests the perceived cognitive costs of completing difficult tasks may reduce older adults' motivation to engage in the tasks.
本研究考察了在完成认知要求较高的任务时所投入努力的年龄差异。52名年龄在18至30岁之间的年轻成年人（平均年龄=21.19岁）和57名年龄在61至93岁之间的老年人（平均年龄=76.56岁）完成了一系列记忆测试。每次测试后，参与者对测试难度进行评分，并测量他们的血压。努力程度以收缩压反应（SBP-R）为指标，SBP-R升高幅度越大表明努力程度越高。采用多层次建模来检验在试验水平主观任务难度与试验水平努力之间的个体内关联中的年龄差异。结果显示，任务难度的增加与老年人而非年轻人的SBP-R下降显著相关，这表明老年人会从他们认为非常困难的测试中退出。研究结果支持选择性参与理论（赫斯，2014年），该理论表明完成困难任务所感知到的认知成本可能会降低老年人参与这些任务的动机。
