Assessment of Adult Age differences in Task Engagement: The Utility of Systolic Blood Pressure

Perceptions of task difficulty predict cognitive effort for older adults

This study examined age differences in effort devoted to completing cognitively demanding tasks. Fifty-two younger adults ages 18-30 years (Mage = 21.19) and 57 older adults ages 61-93 years (Mage = 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.

Increased cognitive effort costs in healthy aging and preclinical Alzheimer's disease

Life-long engagement in cognitively demanding activities may mitigate against declines in cognitive ability observed in healthy or pathological aging. However, the "mental costs" associated with completing cognitive tasks also increase with age and may be partly attributed to increases in preclinical levels of Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology, specifically amyloid. We test whether cognitive effort costs increase in a domain-general manner among older adults, and further, whether such age-related increases in cognitive effort costs are associated with working memory (WM) capacity or amyloid burden, a signature pathology of AD. In two experiments, we administered a behavioral measure of cognitive effort costs (cognitive effort discounting) to a sample of older adults recruited from online sources (Experiment 1) or from ongoing longitudinal studies of aging and dementia (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 compared age-related differences in cognitive effort costs across two domains, WM and speech comprehension. Experiment 2 compared cognitive effort costs between a group of participants who were rated positive for amyloid relative to those with no evidence of amyloid. Results showed age-related increases in cognitive effort costs were evident in both domains. Cost estimates were highly correlated between the WM and speech comprehension tasks but did not correlate with WM capacity. In addition, older adults who were amyloid positive had higher cognitive effort costs than those who were amyloid negative. Cognitive effort costs may index a domain-general trait that consistently increases in aging. Differences in cognitive effort costs associated with amyloid burden suggest a potential neurobiological mechanism for age-related differences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Aging attitudes and changes in the costs of cognitive engagement in older adults over 5 years

The costs associated with performing a specific activity may play an important role in determining engagement, potentially impacting the willingness of older adults to engage in activities-particularly those with high demands-that may have benefits for physical and cognitive health. The present study examined changes in both objective (effort expenditure) and subjective (perceived task demands) costs associated with engagement in a cognitively challenging memory-scan task across a 5-year period in 163 older adults aged 64-81. Consistent with assumptions of selective engagement theory (SET; Hess, 2014), the effort associated with performing the task-as assessed by systolic blood pressure responses-was observed to increase over time. Subjective assessments of costs, as assessed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration task load index (NASA TLX), were also observed to increase. In addition, the increases in both objective and subjective costs were greatest at high levels of task demands. We further found that both the effort and, to a lesser extent, perceived costs associated with performance were moderated by aging attitudes. Specifically, more positive attitudes were associated with greater effort expenditure and lower perceived costs. These findings suggest that negative attitudes about aging may have detrimental effects on perceived ability to perform challenging tasks. Given the importance of costs in determining activity participation, promoting positive aging attitudes along with more realistic perceptions of task demands may provide important means for promoting engagement in beneficial activities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Age-related deficits in dip-listening evident for isolated sentences but not for spoken stories

Fluctuating background sounds facilitate speech intelligibility by providing speech ‘glimpses’ (masking release). Older adults benefit less from glimpses, but masking release is typically investigated using isolated sentences. Recent work indicates that using engaging, continuous speech materials (e.g., spoken stories) may qualitatively alter speech-in-noise listening. Moreover, neural sensitivity to different amplitude envelope profiles (ramped, damped) changes with age, but whether this affects speech listening is unknown. In three online experiments, we investigate how masking release in younger and older adults differs for masked sentences and stories, and how speech intelligibility varies with masker amplitude profile. Intelligibility was generally greater for damped than ramped maskers. Masking release was reduced in older relative to younger adults for disconnected sentences, and stories with a randomized sentence order. Critically, when listening to stories with an engaging and coherent narrative, older adults demonstrated equal or greater masking release compared to younger adults. Older adults thus appear to benefit from ‘glimpses’ as much as, or more than, younger adults when the speech they are listening to follows a coherent topical thread. Our results highlight the importance of cognitive and motivational factors for speech understanding, and suggest that previous work may have underestimated speech-listening abilities in older adults.

Effectiveness of Traditional Chinese Health-Promoting Exercise as an Adjunct Therapy for Drug Use Disorders: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objective: Meta-analysis was used to quantitatively examine the effectiveness of Traditional Chinese Health-Promoting Exercise (TCE) as an adjuvant therapy for drug use disorders and rehabilitation based on previously published studies. Methods: Potential literature was retrieved by searching eight electronic databases (China National Knowledge Infrastructure [CNKI], Wanfang, Chinese Scientific Journal Database, China Biology Medicine [CBM], PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and EBSCOhost) from January 2000 to May 2021, as well as through manual searches, including email. These literature reports comprised randomized, controlled trial studies and nonrandomized, controlled trial studies assessing the effects of TCE intervention on the physical and psychological (mental) health of drug addicts. The quality and bias risk of each study were assessed using the Cochrane bias risk assessment tool. The RevMan5.3 statistical software was employed to evaluate the methodological quality of the included studies, and sensitivity and subgroup analyses using the Stata16.0 MP software were performed to explore the sources of heterogeneity among the data. This study is registered on PROSPERO (CRD42021254124). Results: Data from 14 studies (1094 individuals with drug abuse) meeting the inclusion criteria were extracted for meta-analysis. Compared to the control group, TCE intervention induced significant improvements in the systolic blood pressure (standardized mean difference [SMD] = -0.42, p < 0.05), diastolic blood pressure (SMD = -0.34, p < 0.05), one-leg stand with eyes closed (SMD = 0.74, p < 0.05), Symptom Check List (SMD = -0.42, p < 0.05), anxiety scale (self-rating anxiety scale/STI) (SMD = -0.49, p < 0.05), and depression scale (self-rating depression scale/Beck Depression Inventory/Hamilton Depression Rating Scale for Depression) (SMD = -0.37, p < 0.05). Sensitivity and subgroup analyses of the individual outcome indicators with high heterogeneity (I2 ≥ 50%, p < 0.10) were performed to further explore the source of heterogeneity. The results of the sensitivity analysis showed that, after removing studies one by one, the heterogeneity of the data remained high (I2 > 50), and the difference of synthetic overall effect did not change (p < 0.05), indicating that the sensitivity was low and that the results were robust and reliable. The results of the subgroup analysis results indicated that the gender of the participants and the drug type were the sources of heterogeneity. Conclusion: As an effective mind-body movement intervention, long-term TCE is beneficial to improving the physical and mental health of drug addicts. The specific intervention methods are dependent on the gender of the addict and the drug type, and longer intervention times yielded greater impacts on their physical health.

Absorption and Enjoyment During Listening to Acoustically Masked Stories

Comprehension of speech masked by background sound requires increased cognitive processing, which makes listening effortful. Research in hearing has focused on such challenging listening experiences, in part because they are thought to contribute to social withdrawal in people with hearing impairment. Research has focused less on positive listening experiences, such as enjoyment, despite their potential importance in motivating effortful listening. Moreover, the artificial speech materials-such as disconnected, brief sentences-commonly used to investigate speech intelligibility and listening effort may be ill-suited to capture positive experiences when listening is challenging. Here, we investigate how listening to naturalistic spoken stories under acoustic challenges influences the quality of listening experiences. We assess absorption (the feeling of being immersed/engaged in a story), enjoyment, and listening effort and show that (a) story absorption and enjoyment are only minimally affected by moderate speech masking although listening effort increases, (b) thematic knowledge increases absorption and enjoyment and reduces listening effort when listening to a story presented in multitalker babble, and (c) absorption and enjoyment increase and effort decreases over time as individuals listen to several stories successively in multitalker babble. Our research indicates that naturalistic, spoken stories can reveal several concurrent listening experiences and that expertise in a topic can increase engagement and reduce effort. Our work also demonstrates that, although listening effort may increase with speech masking, listeners may still find the experience both absorbing and enjoyable.

Predictors of engagement in young and older adults: The role of specific activity experience

Activity that places demands on cognitive resources has positive effects on cognitive health in old age. To further understand determinants of age-group differences in participation, we examined how negative aging stereotypes and responses associated with a cognitively challenging activity influenced future willingness to engage in that activity. Sixty-nine young (20-40 years) and 80 older (63-84 years) adults performed a letter-number sequencing (LNS) task at different levels of demand for 15 min, during which systolic blood pressure responses-a measure of effort mobilization-and subjective perceptions of task demands were assessed. Approximately half the participants were primed with a negative aging stereotype prior to this task. Following the LNS task, participants completed an effort-discounting task, with resulting subjective values indicating their willingness to perform the task at each level of demand. As expected, both subjective and objective indicators of cognitive demands as well as performance were associated with future willingness to engage in a difficult task, with these effects being significantly greater for older adults. In addition, although stereotype activation influenced older adults' engagement levels in the LNS task, it did not moderate willingness. Together, the results indicate that, relative to younger adults, older adults' decisions to engage in cognitively challenging activities are disproportionately affected by their subjective perceptions of demands. Interestingly, actual engagement with the task and associated success result in reduced perceptions of difficulty and greater willingness to engage. Thus, overcoming faulty and discouraging task perceptions may promote older adults' engagement in demanding but potentially beneficial activities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Motivation and social-cognitive abilities in older adults: Convergent evidence from self-report measures and cardiovascular reactivity

Recently, some authors have suggested that age-related impairments in social-cognitive abilities-emotion recognition (ER) and theory of mind (ToM)-may be explained in terms of reduced motivation and effort mobilization in older adults. We examined performance on ER and ToM tasks, as well as corresponding control tasks, experimentally manipulating self-involvement. Sixty-one older adults and 57 young adults were randomly assigned to either a High or Low self-involvement condition. In the first condition, self-involvement was raised by telling participants were told that good task performance was associated with a number of positive, personally relevant social outcomes. Motivation was measured with both subjective (self-report questionnaire) and objective (systolic blood pressure reactivity-SBP-R) indices. Results showed that the self-involvement manipulation did not increase self-reported motivation, SBP-R, or task performance. Further correlation analyses focusing on individual differences in motivation did not reveal any association with performance, in either young or older adults. Notably, we found age-related decline in both ER and ToM, despite older adults having higher motivation than young adults. Overall, the present results were not consistent with previous claims that motivation affects older adults' social-cognitive performance, opening the route to potential alternative explanations.

Aging, effort, and stereotyping: The evidence for the moderating role of self-involvement

A study with young and older adults (N = 91) investigated the effect of self-involvement on stereotyping tendency and effort mobilization. We hypothesized that the impact of self-involvement varies as a function of age: increased self-involvement should lead older adults to engage in more effortful information processing and decreased stereotyping, whereas increased self-involvement should have no impact on effort mobilization and stereotyping tendency in young adults. Young and older adults read narratives under low and high-self-involvement conditions before performing a recognition test that measured their stereotyping tendency. Effort was assessed as cardiovascular responses. We found that older adults in the high-self-involvement condition presented low stereotyping tendency (similar to that of young people) in comparison to older adults in the low-self-involvement condition. Furthermore, older adults in the high-self-involvement condition had decreased high-frequency heart rate variability in comparison to the other conditions, but only during the recognition test; this suggests increased effort mobilization. These findings indicate that self-involvement decreases older adults' stereotyping tendency, possibly through effort mobilization.

The role of cognitive costs, attitudes about aging, and intrinsic motivation in predicting engagement in everyday activities

Engagement in cognitively demanding everyday activities has been shown to benefit cognitive health in later life. We investigated the factors that influence engagement, with specific interest in determining the extent to which the costs of engaging cognitive resources are associated with intrinsic motivation and, ultimately, participation in everyday activities. Older adults (N = 153) aged from 65 to 81 years completed a challenging cognitive task, with the costs of cognitive engagement-operationalized as the effort required to maintain performance-assessed using systolic blood pressure responses (SBP-R). We also assessed participation in everyday activities using both 2-year retrospective reports and five daily reports over a 5-week period. Structural models revealed that lower levels of costs were associated with more positive attitudes about aging, which in turn were associated with higher levels of intrinsic motivation. Motivation was subsequently predictive of everyday activity engagement, with the effect being specific to those activities thought to place demands on cognitive resources. The measure of engagement had minimal impact on the nature of the observed effects, suggesting that the retrospective and weekly assessments were tapping into similar constructs. Taken together, the results are consistent with expectations derived from Selective Engagement Theory (Hess, 2014), which argues that engagement in demanding activities is related to the cost associated with such engagement, which in turn leads to selective participation through changes in motivation. (PsycINFO Database Record

Aging and effort expenditure: The impact of subjective perceptions of task demands

Engagement in cognitively demanding activities has a positive impact on cognitive health in older adults. Previous work, however, has suggested that the costs associated with engagement increase in later life and influence motivation. We examined how subjective perceptions of these costs varied with age and influenced task engagement. The following questions were of specific interest: (a) Are there age differences in subjective perceptions of cognitive costs? (b) What is the impact of these perceptions on engagement? We tested 39 older (ages 65-84) and 37 younger (20-42) adults on a working memory task. Systolic blood pressure responsivity (SBP-R; reflective of effort) and subjective perceptions of task difficulty were assessed. We found that age was associated with an increase in the perceptions of cognitive costs, and that these subjective perceptions had a stronger impact on older adults' engagement than on that of younger adults. More important, this impact was specific to subjective perceptions of cognitive costs. The results provide further support for the hypothesis that increased costs associated with cognitive engagement influence older adults' willingness to engage cognitive resources, and that these costs in part reflect subjective perceptions that are independent of objective task demands. (PsycINFO Database Record

The use of resting state data in an integrative approach to studying neurocognitive ageing - Commentary on Campbell and Schacter (2016)

This is a commentary on Campbell and Schacter (2016), 'Ageing and the Resting State: Is Cognition Obsolete?'. Campbell and Schacter argue that resting state data have a limited ability to contribute to the study of neurocognitive ageing and that the field should focus more on results from carefully controlled experimental designs. In this commentary, we argue for a different perspective on future research directions in neurocognitive ageing. Specifically for the need to use a more integrative approach; combining rest and task data as well as information from different modalities to obtain a better understanding of the neural mechanisms that underlie healthy cognitive ageing. Potential benefits of this integrative approach are illustrated with a number of examples. In addition, we discuss some of the advantages of using resting state data as part of this integrative approach.

Effects of Age and Initial Risk Perception on Balloon Analog Risk Task: The Mediating Role of Processing Speed and Need for Cognitive Closure

According to the dual-process theoretical perspective adopted in the presented research, the efficiency of deliberative processes in decision making declines with age, but experiential processes are relatively well-preserved. The age-related differences in deliberative and experiential processes in risky decision-making were examined in this research by applying the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART). We analyzed the influence of age on risk acceptance and decision-making performance in two age groups of female participants (younger adults, n = 81; older adults, n = 76), with additional experimental manipulation of initial risk perception. We predicted and confirmed that aging significantly worsens performance on the behavioral BART measures due to age-related decline in deliberative processes. Older participants were found to exhibit significantly higher risk aversion and lower BART performance, and the effect of age was mediated by cognitive (processing speed) and motivational (need for cognitive closure) mechanisms. Moreover, older adults adapt to the initial failure (vs. success) similarly, as younger adults due to preserved efficiency of experiential processes. These results suggest future directions for minimizing negative effects of aging in risky decision-making and indicate compensatory processes, which are preserved during aging.

The Impact of Motivation and Task Difficulty on Resource Engagement: Differential Influences on Cardiovascular Responses of Young and Older Adults

This study examined whether the level of cognitive engagement older adults were willing to invest is disproportionately influenced by the personal implications of the task, as suggested by Selective Engagement Theory. We experimentally altered the personal implications of the task by manipulating participants accountability for their performance. Young (N = 50) and older (N = 50) adults performed a memory-search task of moderate difficulty but within the capabilities of both age groups. Both physiological (systolic blood pressure responsivity; SBP-R) and subjective (NASA-TLX) measures of cognitive effort were assessed across all difficulty levels. The results replicated findings from previous research that indicated older adults must exert more effort than younger adults to achieve the same level of objective performance. Most importantly, our results showed that older adults were especially sensitive to our accountability manipulation, with the difference in SBP-R between accountability conditions being greater for older than for young adults. Finally, we found that there was little relation between subjective measures of workload and our physiological measures of task engagement. Together, the results of this study provide continued support for the Selective Engagement Theory.

Selective Engagement of Cognitive Resources: Motivational Influences on Older Adults' Cognitive Functioning

In this article, I present a framework for understanding the impact of aging-related declines in cognitive resources on functioning. I make the assumption that aging is associated with an increase in the costs of cognitive engagement, as reflected in both the effort required to achieve a specific level of task performance and the associated depletion or fatigue effects. I further argue that these costs result in older adults being increasingly selective in the engagement of cognitive resources in response to these declines. This selectivity is reflected in (a) a reduction in the intrinsic motivation to engage in cognitively demanding activities, which, in part, accounts for general reductions in engagement in such activities, and (b) greater sensitivity to the self-related implications of a given task. Both processes are adaptive if viewed in terms of resource conservation, but the former may also be maladaptive to the extent that it results in older adults restricting participation in cognitively demanding activities that could ultimately benefit cognitive health. I review supportive research and make the general case for the importance of considering motivational factors in understanding aging effects on cognitive functioning.