Own-age bias in face-name associations: Evidence from memory and visual attention in younger and older adults

Evidence for the role of affective theory of mind in face-name associative memory

Poor face-name recall has been associated with age-related impairments in cognitive functioning, namely declines in episodic memory and executive control. However, the role of social cognitive function - the ability to remember, process, and store information about others - has been largely overlooked in this work. Extensive work has shown that social and nonsocial cognitive processes rely on unique, albeit overlapping, mechanisms. In the current study, we explored whether social cognitive functioning - specifically the ability to infer other people's mental states (i.e., theory of mind) - facilitates better face-name learning. To do this, a sample of 289 older and young adults completed a face-name learning paradigm along with standard assessments of episodic memory and executive control alongside two theory of mind measures, one static and one dynamic. In addition to expected age differences, several key effects emerged. Age-related differences in recognition were explained by episodic memory, not social cognition. However, age effects in recall were explained by both episodic memory and social cognition, specifically affective theory of mind in the dynamic task. Altogether, we contend that face-name recall can be supported by social cognitive functioning, namely understanding emotions. While acknowledging the influence of task characteristics (i.e., lures, target ages), we interpret these findings in light of existing accounts of age differences in face-name associative memory.

Circadian- and wake-dependent influences on face-name memory in healthy men and women over 3weeks of chronic sleep restriction

OBJECTIVES

Facial recognition is one of the key functions of the human brain, and linking a face to a name is critical in many social and occupational settings. This study assessed circadian- and wake-dependent effects on face-name recognition in healthy adults.

METHODS

Thirteen healthy adults (20-70years; 7 F) were studied in a 39-day inpatient protocol that included 3weeks of 28 hours forced desynchrony with sleep restriction (6.5:21.5 hours sleep:wake). Starting 3 hours after scheduled wake, 6 novel face-name pairs were presented every 4 waking hours; recognition was tested 2 hours later. Performance data were averaged across ∼4 hours circadian phase or time-awake bins.

RESULTS

Face-name recognition deteriorated with increased time awake (p < .0001) and exhibited significant circadian variation (p < .0001), with worst performance shortly after the core temperature nadir. There was a significant interaction between sex and circadian phase (p = .0177), with women performing significantly better than men at all circadian phases except 60° and 120°. Women exhibited a significantly higher amplitude than men during the third week of forced desynchrony (p < .01).

CONCLUSIONS

Like many other aspects of neurobehavioral performance, recalling face-name associations is impacted by both duration of time awake and circadian phase. These results have implications for face recognition testing in medical contexts, such as in testing for dementia, because performance may be impacted by sleep deficiency and the time of testing.

Face masks degrade our ability to remember face-name associations more than predicted by judgments of learning

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, face masks became required attire. Face masks obstruct the bottom portion of faces, restricting face processing. The present study examined the influence face masks have on memory predictions and memory performance for new face-name associations. Participants studied face-name pairs presented for 8 s (Experiment 1) or 10 s (Experiment 2). Half of the face-name pairs included a face mask obstructing the nose and mouth of the pictured face, counterbalanced across participants. Participants provided item-by-item judgements of learning (JOLs) and completed subsequent cued recall and associative recognition memory tests. Both experiments demonstrated that face masks impaired memory for newly-learned names, however, the magnitude of the mask impact was under-predicted by JOLs. The presence of a face mask negatively influenced memory performance to a greater degree than participants' JOLs predicted. Results have implications for name learning during pandemics, as well as in settings where face masks are common (e.g., medical field).

Familiarity enhances mnemonic precision but impairs mnemonic accuracy in visual working memory

Prior stimulus familiarity has a variety of effects on visual working memory representations and processes. However, it is still unclear how familiarity interacts with the veridical correspondence between mnemonic representation and external stimuli. Here, we examined the effect of familiarity on two aspects of mnemonic correspondence, precision and accuracy, in visual working memory. Specifically, we used a hierarchical Bayesian method to model task performance in a change detection task with celebrity lookalikes (morphed faces between celebrities and noncelebrities with various ratios) as the memory stimuli. We found that familiarity improves memory precision by sharpening mnemonic representation but impairs memory accuracy by biasing mnemonic representation toward familiar faces (i.e., celebrity faces). These findings provide an integrated account of the puzzling celebrity sighting phenomena with the dissociable effects on mnemonic imprecision and bias and further highlight the importance of assessing these two aspects of memory correspondence in future research.

Facial Trustworthiness Perception Across the Adult Life Span

OBJECTIVES

Trust is crucial for successful social interaction across the life span. Perceiver age, facial age, and facial emotion have been shown to influence trustworthiness perception, but the complex interplay between these perceiver and facial characteristics has not been examined.

METHOD

Adopting an adult life-span developmental approach, 199 adults (aged 22-78 years) rated the trustworthiness of faces that systematically varied in age (young, middle-aged, and older) and emotion (neutral, happy, sad, fearful, angry, and disgusted) from the FACES Lifespan Database.

RESULTS

The study yielded three key results. First, on an aggregated level, facial trustworthiness perception did not differ by perceiver age. Second, all perceivers rated young faces as the most trustworthy, and middle-aged and older (but not young) perceivers rated older faces as least trustworthy. Third, facial emotions signaling threat (fear, anger, and disgust) relative to neutral, happy, and sad expressions moderated age effects on facial trustworthiness perception.

DISCUSSION

Findings from this study highlight the impact of perceiver and facial characteristics on facial trustworthiness perception in adulthood and aging and have potential to inform first impression formation, with effects on trait attributions and behavior. This publication also provides normative data on perceived facial trustworthiness for the FACES Lifespan Database.

Preservation of long-term memory in older adults using a spaced learning paradigm

How much information we retain depends on type/schedule of training. It has been widely acknowledged that spaced learning is advantageous compared to massed learning for cognitively healthy young adults and should be considered an educational standard. Literature would suggest that the spacing effect is preserved with age, though it is unclear whether this effect translates to more ecologically valid concepts such as face-name associations, which are particularly susceptible to deterioration with age. Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of spacing across recent/remote retention intervals, and the effect of age on spacing in cognitively healthy older adults using the Face-Name Pairs task. Experiment 1 results suggest that the beneficial memory effects of spacing are particularly observed with long-term memory. Experiment 2 results suggest that older adults are impaired at learning compared to younger adults, that the spacing effect influences both older and younger adults at longer intervals, and that spaced-trained participants display similar forgetting patterns at longer intervals, irrespective of age. These results may have some implications regarding improving the conditions under which optimum retention occurs (namely, whether spacing is beneficial when learning ecologically valid concepts at longer intervals outside of laboratory settings), and may provide insight into the effect of age on our ability to learn and remember face-name associations.

They Cannot, They Will Not, or We Are Asking the Wrong Questions: Re-examining Age-Related Decline in Social Cognition

Social cognition is critical for successfully navigating social relationships. Current evidence suggests that older adults exhibit poorer performance in several core social-cognitive domains compared to younger adults. Neurocognitive decline is commonly discussed as one of the key arbiters of age-related decline in social-cognitive abilities. While evidence supports this notion, age effects are likely attributable to multiple factors. This paper aims to recontextualize past evidence by focusing issues of motivation, task design, and representative samples. In light of these issues, we identify directions for future research to aide our understanding of social-cognitive aging.

Curcumin induces cortico-hippocampal neuronal reshaping and memory improvements in aged mice

Aging induces cognitive decline, reduces of synaptic plasticity and increases oxidative reactive species (ROS) in the central nervous system. Traditional medicine has long benefitted from naturally occurring molecules such as curcumin (diferuloymethane). Curcumin is extracted from the plant Curcuma longa and is known for its synaptic and antioxidant-related benefits. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that chronic curcumin treatment reduces cognitive and cellular effects of aging. Curcumin-treated mice showed improved learning and memory using the Morris Water Maze and novel object recognition task. In addition, using the Golgi-Cox stain, curcumin treatment increased spine density in all evaluated regions and increased dendritic arborization in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) layer 3 and CA3 subregion of the hippocampus. Moreover, chronic curcumin exposure increased synaptophysin and actin expression and reduced glial fibrillary acidic protein expression, a marker of astrocytes, in the hippocampus (CA1 and CA3 subregions), while simultaneously reducing the ROS-related molecule, metallothionein 3 expression in the PFC and hippocampus. Collectively, these novel findings suggest that curcumin reduces cognitive, neuronal and astrocytic signs of aging in mice.

The Role of the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in Preferential Decisions for Own- and Other-Age Faces

Own-age bias is a well-known bias reflecting the effects of age, and its role has been demonstrated, particularly, in face recognition. However, it remains unclear whether an own-age bias exists in facial impression formation. In the present study, we used three datasets from two published and one unpublished functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study that employed the same pleasantness rating task with fMRI scanning and preferential choice task after the fMRI to investigate whether healthy young and older participants showed own-age effects in face preference. Specifically, we employed a drift-diffusion model to elaborate the existence of own-age bias in the processes of preferential choice. The behavioral results showed higher rating scores and higher drift rate for young faces than for older faces, regardless of the ages of participants. We identified a young-age effect, but not an own-age effect. Neuroimaging results from aggregation analysis of the three datasets suggest a possibility that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) was associated with evidence accumulation of own-age faces; however, no clear evidence was provided. Importantly, we found no age-related decline in the responsiveness of the vmPFC to subjective pleasantness of faces, and both young and older participants showed a contribution of the vmPFC to the parametric representation of the subjective value of face and functional coupling between the vmPFC and ventral visual area, which reflects face preference. These results suggest that the preferential choice of face is less susceptible to the own-age bias across the lifespan of individuals.

An own-race bias in the categorisation and recall of associative information

ABSTRACTPeople tend to better remember same-race faces relative to other-race faces (an "own-race" bias). We examined whether the own-race bias extends to associative memory, particularly in the identification and recall of information paired with faces. In Experiment 1, we presented white participants with own- and other-race faces which either appeared alone or accompanied by a label indicating whether the face was a "criminal" or a "victim". Results revealed an own-race facial recognition advantage regardless of the presence of associative information. In Experiment 2, we again paired same- and other-race faces with either "criminal" or "victim" labels, but rather than a recognition test, participants were asked to identify whether each face had been presented as a criminal or a victim. White criminals were better categorised than Black criminals, but race did not influence the categorisation of victims. In Experiment 3, white participants were presented with same- and other-race faces and asked to remember where the person was from, their occupation, and a crime they committed. Results revealed a recall advantage for the associative information paired with same-race faces. Collectively, these findings suggest that the own-race bias extends to the categorisation and recall of information in associative memory.

Effects of Aging on the Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Recollection of Memories Encoded by Social Interactions With Persons in the Same and Different Age Groups

Memories related to ingroup members are remembered more accurately than those related to outgroup members. However, little is known about the age-dependent differences in neural mechanisms underlying the retrieval of memories shared with ingroup or outgroup members that are categorized by age-group membership. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated this issue. Healthy young and older adults participated in a 2-day experiment. On the first day outside fMRI, participants were presented with words by unfamiliar persons in movie clips and exchanged each word with persons belonging to the same age group (SAG) or different age group (DAG). On the second day during fMRI, participants were randomly presented with learned and new words one by one, and they judged whether each word had been encoded with either SAG or DAG members or neither. fMRI results demonstrated that an age-dependent decrease in successful retrieval activation of memories presented by DAG was identified in the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) and hippocampus, whereas with memories presented by SAG, an age-dependent decrease in activation was not found in any regions. In addition, an age-dependent decrease in functional connectivity was significant between the hippocampus/ATL and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) during the successful retrieval of memories encoded with the DAG people. The “other”-related mechanisms including the hippocampus, ATL, and pSTS with memories learned with the outgroup members could decrease in older adults, whereas with memories learned with the ingroup members, the “self”-related mechanisms could be relatively preserved in older adults.

The Role of Intranasal Oxytocin on Social Cognition: An Integrative Human Lifespan Approach

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

This narrative review synthesizes research from the last two decades on the modulatory role of intranasal OT administration (IN-OT) on social cognition in early life, young/middle adulthood, and older adulthood. Advances and knowledge gaps are identified, and future research directions are discussed within an integrative human lifespan framework to guide novel research on IN-OT and social cognition.

RECENT FINDINGS

Current evidence regarding IN-OT modulation of social-cognitive processes, behavior, and related neurocircuitry is mixed, with some studies suggesting benefits (e.g., improved social perception/interactions, emotion processing) depending on contextual (e.g., social stimuli) and interindividual factors (e.g., age, sex, clinical status). Current research, however, is limited by a focus on isolated life phases, males, and select clinical populations as well as a lack of standardized protocols.

SUMMARY

This literature-based reflection proposes that greater generalizability of findings and scientific advancement on social-cognitive modulation via IN-OT require standardized, multi-method, longitudinal, and cross-sequential assessments in well-powered, well-controlled, and representative samples in line with an integrative lifespan approach, which considers development as a lifelong dynamic process involving both change and stability characterized by the interplay between genetic, neurobiological, and socio-behavioral factors.

Natural products present neurotrophic properties in neurons of the limbic system in aging rodents

Aging is a complex process that can lead to neurodegeneration and, consequently, several pathologies, including dementia. Physiological aging leads to changes in several body organs, including those of the central nervous system (CNS). Morphological changes in the CNS and particularly the brain result in motor and cognitive deficits affecting learning and memory and the circadian cycle. Characterizing neural modifications is critical to designing new therapies to target aging and associated pathologies. In this review, we compared aging to the changes occurring within the brain and particularly the limbic system. Then, we focused on key natural compounds, apamin, cerebrolysin, Curcuma longa, resveratrol, and N-PEP-12, which have shown neurotrophic effects particularly in the limbic system. Finally, we drew our conclusions delineating future perspectives for the development of novel natural therapeutics to ameliorate aging-related processes.