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

The Influence of Mental Fatigue on Physical Performance and Its Relationship with Rating Perceived Effort and Enjoyment in Older Adults

The study investigated the influence of mental fatigue on older people's enjoyment during a series of physical exercises. Using a randomized cross-over design, participants (n = 35) completed a 6-minute walking test - 6MWT, a Timed Up and Go-TUG test and three sets of knee extension exercise (first set: KE1, second set: KE2, third set: KE3) under two experimental conditions (control or mental fatigue). The Nonparametric Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Factorial Experiments was used to compare the number of repetitions performed during three sets of resistance exercise between conditions. The same analysis method was applied to compare the perception of effort and enjoyment across five moments (Post-6MWT, Post-TUG, Post-KE1, Post-KE2, Post-KE3) and two conditions and the Visual Analogue Scales (VAS) across four moments (baseline, Pre-6MWT, Pre-TUG, Pre-KE) and two conditions. Mental fatigue did not affect the physical function, perception of effort and enjoyment of exercise in older people. Participants, however, reported higher enjoyment for walking and dynamic balance compared to strength exercise. Mental fatigue had no effect on the physical function, perception of effort and enjoyment of exercise of older people. Participants presented a higher enjoyment for walking and dynamic balance compared to strength exercise. Given the importance of resistance exercises for health, clinicians should prioritize resources to education programs emphasizing the benefits of resistance exercise in both short- and long-term health. Including social interaction opportunities in physical exercise programs and prescribing activities appropriate to participants' ability levels could enhance engagement and adherence.

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).

Self-reported cognition in older adults with insomnia: Associations with sleep and domain specific cognition

Poor subjective evaluation of cognition and sleep are associated with cognitive decline in older adults. Relationships among self-reported cognition, sleep, and cognitive domains remain unclear. We evaluated the interactive associations of objective cognition and subjective sleep with self-reported cognition in older adults with insomnia. Fifty-one older adults (M_age  = 69.19, SD = 7.95) with insomnia completed 14 days of self-reported cognition ratings (0-very poor, 100-very good), sleep (total sleep time (TST), sleep onset latency (SOL), wake after sleep onset (WASO), sleep efficiency), and daily cognitive tasks: Letter series (reasoning), word list delayed recall (verbal memory), Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT) (attention/processing speed), and number copy (processing speed). Multiple regressions for each cognitive task determined whether average objective cognition or sleep were independently/interactively associated with average self-reported cognition, controlling for age, education, and depression. The interaction between SDMT performance and TST was associated with self-reported cognition. Specifically, the relationship between scores and self-reported cognition was congruent in those with the shortest TST. Similarly, the interactions between SDMT and WASO, as well as sleep efficiency, were associated with self-reported. Specifically, the relationship between scores and self-reported cognition was congruent in those with longest and average WASO, as well as shortest and average sleep efficiency. The findings suggest, in an older adult population with insomnia, a congruent association exists between attention/processing speed and self-reported cognition in those with worse subjective sleep (shorter TST, longer WASO, and lower SE). Insomnia symptoms should be taken into consideration when examining the relationship between objective cognition and self-reported cognition.

Cognitive Effort-Based Decision-Making Across Experimental and Daily Life Indices in Younger and Older Adults

OBJECTIVES

The study investigated whether cognitive effort decision-making measured via a neuroeconomic paradigm that manipulated framing (gain vs. loss outcomes), could predict daily life engagement in mentally demanding activities in both younger and older adults.

METHOD

Younger and older adult participants (N = 310) completed the Cognitive Effort Discounting paradigm (Cog-ED), under both gain and loss conditions, to provide an experimental index of cognitive effort costs for each participant in each framing condition. A subset of participants (N = 230) also completed a 7-day Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) protocol measuring engagement in mentally demanding daily life activities.

RESULTS

In a large, online sample, we replicated a robust increase in cognitive effort costs among older, relative to younger, adults. Additionally, costs were found to be reduced in the loss relative to gain frame, although these effects were only reliable at high levels of task difficulty and were not moderated by age. Critically, participants who had lower effort costs in the gain frame tended to report engaging in more mentally demanding daily life activities, but the opposite pattern was observed in the loss frame. Further analyses demonstrated the specificity of reward-related cognitive motivation in predicting daily life mentally demanding activities.

DISCUSSION

Together, these results suggest that cognitive effort costs, as measured through behavioral choice patterns in a neuroeconomic decision-making task, can be used to predict and explain engagement in mentally demanding activities during daily life among both older and younger adults.

Determinants of Social Cognitive Aging: Predicting Resilience and Risk

This review focuses on conceptual and empirical research on determinants of social cognitive aging. We present an integrated model [the social cognitive resource (SCoRe) framework] to organize the literature and describe how social cognitive resilience is determined jointly by capacity and motivational resources. We discuss how neurobiological aging, driven by genetic and environmental influences, is associated with broader sensory, neural, and physiological changes that are direct determinants of capacity as well as indirect determinants of motivation via their influence on expectation of loss versus reward and cognitive effort valuation. Research is reviewed that shows how contextual factors, such as relationship status, familiarity, and practice, are fundamental to understanding the availability of both types of resource. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of social cognitive change in late adulthood for everyday social functioning and with recommendations for future research.

Older adults' memory beliefs predict perceptions of memory strategy difficulty and effectiveness

The current study investigated whether memory self-efficacy and beliefs about the controllability of memory abilities relate to older adults' perceptions of the difficulty and effectiveness of various strategies for improving their everyday memory. One hundred and fifteen older adults (ages 65-89) completed the Personal Beliefs about Memory Instrument to evaluate their beliefs about their own memory abilities and the Memory Strategies Questionnaire to assess perceptions of the difficulty and effectiveness of utilizing six different strategic approaches for optimizing memory function. Results showed that memory-self efficacy related to older adults' perceptions of how difficult various memory strategies are to implement, whereas control beliefs related to perceptions of memory strategy effectiveness. These results advance our understanding of how memory beliefs influence older adults' selection of approaches to improve their everyday memory abilities.

Everything Comes at a Price: Considerations in Modeling Effort-Based Choice

When observing human behavior, one of the key factors determining choice is effort. It is often assumed that people prefer an easier course of action when the alternative yields the same benefits. However, recent research demonstrates that this is not always the case: effort is not always costly and can also add value. A promising avenue to study effort-based choice is to utilize formal decision models that enable quantitative modeling. In this paper, we aim to present an overview of the current approaches to modeling effort-based choice and discuss some considerations that stem from theoretical and practical issues (present and previous) in studies on the role of effort, focusing on the connections and discrepancies between formal models and the findings from the body of empirical research. Considering that effort can, in some circumstances, act as a cost and as a benefit, reconciling these discrepancies is a practical and theoretical challenge that can ultimately lead to better predictions and increased model validity. Our review identifies and discusses these discrepancies providing direction for future empirical research.

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).

Cognitive Control as a Multivariate Optimization Problem

A hallmark of adaptation in humans and other animals is our ability to control how we think and behave across different settings. Research has characterized the various forms cognitive control can take-including enhancement of goal-relevant information, suppression of goal-irrelevant information, and overall inhibition of potential responses-and has identified computations and neural circuits that underpin this multitude of control types. Studies have also identified a wide range of situations that elicit adjustments in control allocation (e.g., those eliciting signals indicating an error or increased processing conflict), but the rules governing when a given situation will give rise to a given control adjustment remain poorly understood. Significant progress has recently been made on this front by casting the allocation of control as a decision-making problem. This approach has developed unifying and normative models that prescribe when and how a change in incentives and task demands will result in changes in a given form of control. Despite their successes, these models, and the experiments that have been developed to test them, have yet to face their greatest challenge: deciding how to select among the multiplicity of configurations that control can take at any given time. Here, we will lay out the complexities of the inverse problem inherent to cognitive control allocation, and their close parallels to inverse problems within motor control (e.g., choosing between redundant limb movements). We discuss existing solutions to motor control's inverse problems drawn from optimal control theory, which have proposed that effort costs act to regularize actions and transform motor planning into a well-posed problem. These same principles may help shed light on how our brains optimize over complex control configuration, while providing a new normative perspective on the origins of mental effort.

BFF: Bayesian, Fiducial, and Frequentist Analysis of Cognitive Engagement among Cognitively Impaired Older Adults

Engagement in cognitively demanding activities is beneficial to preserving cognitive health. Our goal was to demonstrate the utility of frequentist, Bayesian, and fiducial statistical methods for evaluating the robustness of effects in identifying factors that contribute to cognitive engagement for older adults experiencing cognitive decline. We collected a total of 504 observations across two longitudinal waves of data from 28 cognitively impaired older adults. Participants’ systolic blood pressure responsivity, an index of cognitive engagement, was continuously sampled during cognitive testing. Participants reported on physical and mental health challenges and provided hair samples to assess chronic stress at each wave. Using the three statistical paradigms, we compared results from six model testing levels and longitudinal changes in health and stress predicting changes in cognitive engagement. Findings were mostly consistent across the three paradigms, providing additional confidence in determining effects. We extend selective engagement theory to cognitive impairment, noting that health challenges and stress appear to be important moderators. Further, we emphasize the utility of the Bayesian and fiducial paradigms for use with relatively small sample sizes because they are not based on asymptotic distributions. In particular, the fiducial paradigm is a useful tool because it provides more information than p values without the need to specify prior distributions, which may unduly influence the results based on a small sample. We provide the R code used to develop and implement all models.

Adult Age Differences in the Effects of Chronic Mental Fatigue on Task-Related Fatigue, Appraisals, and Performance

Engagement in potentially beneficial activities is assumed to be based partially on perceived costs and benefits. Mental fatigue may be one factor that affects perceived costs. We examined age differences in both chronic and situational mental fatigue, and their relation to task perceptions and engagement levels. Younger (M _age = 32.6) and older (M _age = 73.1) adults completed questionnaires measuring subjective mental fatigue, physical and mental health, and motivational states, along with several assessments of cognitive ability. In addition, assessments of effort expenditure (systolic blood pressure) and task difficulty were collected during performance of a cognitively demanding memory-scan task. Two components of chronic mental fatigue (CMF) relating to affect and motivation were identified. Although the structure of CMF did not vary with age, CMF was differentially predictive of engagement and appraisal levels across groups. As CMF-Affect levels increased, older adults' task-difficulty appraisals increased more than those of younger adults. In addition, CMF-Affect was positively associated with levels of engagement in the young, but negatively associated in the old as memory load increased. Older adults also exhibited higher levels of situational fatigue than did the young, as evidenced by increased levels of effort expenditure as both time on task and objective demands increased. However, little relationship existed between chronic and situational mental fatigue in either age group. These findings suggest that the affective aspect of CMF is particularly consequential in older adults, with both task appraisals and engagement levels being negatively affected when fatigue is high.