The effects of age on perceptual problem-solving strategies

The Contribution of Shape Features and Demographic Variables to Disembedding Abilities

Humans naturally perceive visual patterns in a global manner and are remarkably capable of extracting object shapes based on properties such as proximity, closure, symmetry, and good continuation. Notwithstanding the role of these properties in perceptual grouping, studies highlighted differences in disembedding performance across individuals, which are summarized by the field dependence dimension. Evidence suggests that age and educational attainment explain part of this variability, whereas the role of sex is still highly debated. Also, which stimulus features primarily influence inter-individual variations in perceptual grouping has still to be fully determined. Building upon these premises, we assessed the role of age, education level, and sex on performance at the Leuven Embedded Figure Test—a proxy of disembedding abilities—in 391 cisgender individuals. We also investigated to what extent shape symmetry, closure, complexity, and continuation relate to task accuracy. Overall, target asymmetry, closure, and good continuation with the embedding context increase task difficulty. Simpler shapes are more difficult to detect than those with more lines, yet context complexity impairs the recognition of complex targets (i.e., those with 6 lines or more) to a greater extent. Concerning demographic data, we confirm that age and educational attainment are significantly associated with disembedding abilities and reveal a perceptual advantage in males. In summary, our study further highlights the role of shape properties in disembedding performance and unveils sex differences not reported so far.

Longitudinal Effects of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi Program on Cognitive Ability and Cognitive Style

50 college students practicing the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program were administered the Culture Fair Intelligence Test and Group Embedded Figures Test. Significant longitudinal increases over a 3- to 5-yr. period were found in performance on both measures. In the context of normative data, these findings indicate that the practices contribute to an increase in the effectiveness of cognitive ability and cognitive style. The results are consistent with previous findings on the positive effect of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program on these variables in an educational setting.

Sensorimotor and cognitive factors associated with the age-related increase of visual field dependence: a cross-sectional study

Reliance on the visual frame of reference for spatial orientation (or visual field dependence) has been reported to increase with age. This has implications on old adults' daily living tasks as it affects stability, attention, and adaptation capacities. However, the nature and underlying mechanisms of this increase are not well defined. We investigated sensorimotor and cognitive factors possibly associated with increased visual field dependence in old age, by considering functions that are both known to degrade with age and important for spatial orientation and sensorimotor control: reliance on the (somatosensory-based) egocentric frame of reference, visual fixation stability, and attentional processing of complex visual scenes (useful field of view, UFOV). Twenty young, 18 middle-aged, and 20 old adults completed a visual examination, three tests of visual field dependence (RFT, RDT, and GEFT), a test of egocentric dependence (subjective vertical estimation with the body erect and tilted at 70°), a visual fixation task, and a test of visual attentional processing (UFOV®). Increased visual field dependence with age was associated with reduced egocentric dependence, visual fixation stability, and visual attentional processing. In addition, visual fixation instability and reduced UFOV were correlated. Results of middle-aged adults fell between those of the young and old, revealing the progressive nature of the age effects we evaluated. We discuss results in terms of reference frame selection with respect to ageing as well as visual and non-visual information processing. Inter-individual differences amongst old adults are highlighted and discussed with respect to the functionality of increased visual field dependence.

Spatial abilities and aging: a meta-analysis

BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: Age-related effects in performance on spatial tasks have been well documented, with results suggesting a negative effect on performance in older samples. Although meta-analyses have been conducted examining performance on specific spatial tasks, it appears that data incorporating a variety of tasks have not yet been integrated into a single meta-analyses.

METHODS

The present study examined age-related effects on spatial abilities in a multilevel meta-analysis of 137 effect sizes, drawn from 80 samples dated between 1958 and 2011. In addition to sample characteristics (education, year of publication, and age range), procedural factors (spatial ability category, spatial task, dependent variable, task setting, and medium of administration) were also considered. The standardized mean difference (Cohen's d) was used as the effect size measure in meta-analytic calculations.

RESULTS

RESULTS revealed a large (mean d = 1.01) age-related decrease in spatial performance on psychometric tests. Specifically, older adults (mean age range = 63-79.5 years) performed worse on psychometric tests than younger adults (mean age range = 17-28.6 years). Interestingly, this age effect was unaffected by factors such as specific test, test category (mental rotation, spatial perception, or spatial visualization), timing conditions, and group or individual administration. However, measures of response time produced significantly larger effects of age than measures of accuracy on spatial performance.

CONCLUSION

The present analysis demonstrates a clear pattern of negative age effects in spatial ability across the literature. Although these effects are unaffected by the specific spatial component under investigation or testing conditions, speed of processing was shown to be an important factor in spatial performance. The need to report more thoroughly on characteristics of young and old participants in future studies is also emphasized.

Executive functioning in adults and children with developmental dyslexia

The performance of developmentally dyslexic children and adults was studied upon a range of tasks that involved executive functioning. Both adult and child samples of dyslexics were found to under-perform on the group-embedded figures test. This test required the identification of constituent parts from within complex visual arrays, with good performance necessitating the inhibition of the processing of the surrounding context. A general deficit on visual-spatial tasks was eliminated as an explanation as dyslexics performed normally upon a range of other non-verbal assessments. The dyslexics consistently demonstrated a deficit in digit span tasks, a decrement that was increased with distractors, again suggesting difficulties in inhibiting the processing of the surrounding context. A deficit was also identified upon a verbal fluency task without a deficit in vocabulary level. Additionally, a specific deficit in the recollection of the temporal order of the presentation of items was in evidence, without a deficit in the recognition of the items themselves. The findings taken as a whole suggest that dyslexic individuals show deficiencies in executive functions relating to inhibition of distractors and to sequencing of events, a set of tasks associated with left prefrontal cortex functioning in the acquired neuropsychology literature.

The effects of color and preretinal aging on embedded figures test performance: a failure to replicate

This study examined the hypothesis that preretinal aging may adversely affect performance in older adults. The relationship between preretinal aging and a perceptual variable (i.e., color) was also explored. Under standard testing procedures, the (a) normal, (b) light-attenuated, and (c) simulated aged performance of 90 young women was compared to the performance of 30 elderly women, using two forms (colored or noncolored) of the Embedded Figures Test (EFT). Results revealed that young women performed significantly better than elderly women on all measures, suggesting that neither the simulation of preretinal aging nor color was a significant factor in EFT performance. Inasmuch as the present study failed to replicate Ball and Pollack (1989), the critical age-related factors in cognitive/perceptual performance have yet to be identified.

Age and living conditions as related to perceptions of ambiguous figures

For ambiguous figures, reversing and embedded/hidden subfigures, data were obtained from four groups of 20 subjects each varying in age (young or elderly) and living environments (in college, in the community, and in nursing homes or confined to an institution). 10 men and 10 women were tested in each of the four groups. Dependent measures were the number of reversals passively reported for the Necker cube, the Mach book, the Schroeder staircase within 90 sec. on each task, and the number of embedded/hidden figures located. Younger subjects generally saw more reversals and found more embedded figures than elderly ones. The subjects' living situation, education, and verbal ability also were correlated with perceptual performance. These results suggest generalization of age associations with scores in 90 sec. must be tempered by consideration of other factors which affect intactness, basic competence, and how competence is measured.

Simulated aged performance on the embedded figures test

According to Labouvie-Vief (1985) the predominant explanatory mechanism for performance decline among the elderly incorporates a regression-oriented view of cognitive development: The present study tested the hypothesis that age-related performance decline may be explained by the quantitative changes in lower-level visual functions, such as those due to preretinal aging, which preclude the expression of intact cognitive (qualitative) processes. Thirty undergraduate female volunteers (18 to 25 years) viewed the Embedded Figures Test (EFT) under three conditions: no-filter viewing, .6 neutral-density filter viewing, and simulated-aged (yellow-filter plus .5 neutral-density filter) viewing. A one-way ANOVA revealed significant viewing condition effects for the number of items solved, the number of errors, and time-to-solution. Significant linear trends were found for levels of luminous transmittance. Results supported the hypothesis that preretinal aging appears to degrade EFT performance.

Age and field independence among women

Age and the relationship to field independence, as measured by the Embedded Figures Test (EFT), among a sample of 160 creative women was studied. Comparisons were made between the mean EFT scores of creatine women and the mean scores of a sample of women not selected for creativity and the mean scores of two samples of men. Creative women were shown to be more field independent than women not selected for creativity and as field independence as two samples of younger men. A small but significant correlation between age and field independence was found. Older women, creative or not creative, were less field independent than younger women.

Age effects in problem solving in relation to irrelevant information, dimensional preference, and feedback

Forty middle-aged (M age=41.62 years) and forty elderly (M age= 72.22 years) women solved matrix problems that varied according to levels of irrelevant information and dimensional preferences. One-half of the women within each age group received corrective verbal feedback while solving the problems. Increasing levels of irrelevant information affected processing times and accuracy scores for both age groups, but middle-aged were significantly faster and more accurate than elderly. There was also evidence for the effects of dimensional preferences. On multidimensional matrix problems subjects made more errors by processing only a most preferred rather than only a least-preferred stimulus dimension. Feedback improved matrix performance, although its effects on the accuracy scores of the elderly were attenuated by the presence of less preferred dimensions. The findings were discussed in terms of an age-related, selective-attention deficit.