Age as a moderator of the relationship between planning and temporal information processing

Abstract

Planning is a fundamental mental ability related to executive functions. It allows to select, order and execute subgoals to achieve a goal. Studies have indicated that these processes are characterised by a specific temporal dynamics reflected in temporal information processing (TIP) in some tens of millisecond domain. Both planning and TIP decline with age but the underlying mechanisms are unclear. The novel value of the present study was to examine these mechanisms in young (n = 110) and elderly (n = 91) participants in Tower of London task, considering two structural properties of problems: search depth related to static maintenance in working memory, and goal ambiguity reflecting dynamic cognitive flexibility. Results revealed that TIP predicted planning accuracy both directly and indirectly (via preplanning) but only in young participants in problems characterised by high goal ambiguity. Better planning is related to longer preplanning and more efficient TIP. This result demonstrates for the first time age-related differences in the contribution of TIP to planning. In young participants TIP contributed to dynamic cognitive flexibility, but not to static maintenance processes. In elderly such relation was not observed probably because the deficient planning might depend on working memory maintenance rather than on cognitive flexibility.

Neuropsychological correlates of P300 parameters in individuals with aphasia

“…We also observed a significant correlation between P300 latency and planning ability. As suggested by other authors (Jablonska et al, 2022;Nowak et al, 2016), the temporal dynamics facilitate the ability to organize and coordinate the sequences of actions required to perform mental planning. Thus, processing speed underlies the rate at which planning operations are executed.…”

Cognitive training incorporating temporal information processing improves linguistic and non-linguistic functions in people with aphasia

“…The factors which likely contributed to improvements in verbal short-term and working memory—TIP exercises, phonological hearing, and maintenance of verbal stimuli in memory—did not, by their nature, provide any transferable benefits for the visuo-spatial domain. Finally, referring to a previous study with a healthy group 67 , we expected that improved TIP would enhance the organisation and coordination of sequences of events, resulting in better performance on the planning task. However, we did not observe any significant improvement here.…”

Application of instrumental investigations of cosmic-ray muon arrival time measurements to human brain processing of subjective temporal order

“…Temporal order and simultaneity have been extensively discussed in various elds of physics 2,3,4,5 , philosophy 6 , and even in science ction 7 . In particular, temporal order judgement (TOJ) ability and simultaneity judgement ability are extensively studied in the eld of neuroscience with a focus on the process of aging 8,9,10,11,12 and neurological disorders 13,14,15,16,17 .…”