Social understanding: How does it fare with advancing years?

Abstract

Until recently, theory of mind abilities have received little attention beyond the childhood years. However, pioneering work carried out by Happé, Winner, and Brownell (1998) has opened the doors on a new and exciting area of research that examines theory of mind abilities in later years. Happé et al. reported that theory of mind performance was superior in the elderly. Yet, in direct contrast to these findings, Maylor, Moulson, Muncer, and Taylor (2002) report a decline in theory of mind abilities with advancing years. We used Happé et al.'s task and, like Maylor et al., found a decline in theory of mind abilities in the elderly. Yet this deficit was related to a decline in fluid abilities. We then examined whether deficits in social understanding in the elderly could also be independent of fluid abilities. We used two new tasks; identifying emotions from still photos and identifying emotions and cognitions from video clips. Again we found a decline in social understanding in the elderly, and in this case, the decline was independent of changes in fluid abilities.

Age and Musical Expertise Influence Emotion Recognition in Music

“…Although a more fine-grained and objective measure could have revealed subtle age-related decrements in hearing thresholds, it is unlikely that these would be the origin of changes in emotion recognition: they would predict more general effects across emotions, not selective changes for negative vs. positive emotions. The notion that changes in the recognition of musical emotions can occur beyond cognitive and sensory losses confirms and extends findings for speech prosody (Mitchell, 2007;Orbelo et al, 2005), facial expressions (Keightley et al, 2006;Ruffman et al, 2008;Sullivan & Ruffman, 2004), and body postures (Ruffman et al, 2009). In these modalities, it has been suggested that neural deterioration in structures subtending emotion processing, or top-down controlled processes towards positivity, might explain age-related changes.…”

“…One possibility is that they result from age-related cognitive and sensory losses, in domains such as attention, memory, vision, and hearing (e.g., Fozard & Gordon-Salant, 2011;Hedden & Gabrieli, 2004;Salthouse, 2009). There is some evidence, though, that these factors are poor predictors of age effects for facial expressions, speech prosody, and body postures (Keightley, Winocur, Burianova, Hongwanishkul, & Grady, 2006;Lambrecht et al, 2012;Mitchell, 2007;Orbelo, Grim, Talbott, & Ross, 2005;Ruffman et al, 2008;Ryan, Murray, & Ruffman, 2010;Sullivan & Ruffman, 2004). Thus, more specific mechanisms may be involved.…”

Teoria da mente ao longo do desenvolvimento normativo: Da idade escolar até à idade adulta

“…Os últimos, posteriormente adotados na avaliação em amostras normativas, compreendem exemplos como sejam a Tarefa das Histórias Estranhas (Strange Stories Task, Happé, 1994) A Tarefa das Histórias Estranhas (Happé, 1994) utilizada pela primeira vez num estudo com uma amostra clínica e uma amostra normativa de crianças e adultos, foi adaptada para utilização em amostras normativas de adultos (Happé, Winner, & Brownell, 1998) e envolve 24 pequenas histórias de situações quotidianas: 8 que implicam inferências acerca de pensamentos, sentimentos ou intenções das personagens e 16 histórias de controlo (sendo que 8 envolvem uma interpretação meramente física e as restantes caracterizam-se pela incoerência dos conteúdos apresentados). Outros estudos têm usado esta tarefa com adultos, apresentando variações ao nível do tipo e número de histórias utilizadas (e.g., Sullivan & Ruffman, 2004), bem como das medidas consideradas, nomeadamente o registo dos tempos de resposta dos participantes (e.g., Maylor, Moulson, Muncer, & Taylor, 2002). Por seu turno, no Teste da Leitura de Mentes nos Olhos (Baron-Cohen, O'Riordan, Stone, Jones, & Plaisted, 1997;Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001) o participante observa um conjunto de 36 fotografias exclusivamente da região ocular e seleciona, entre uma série de quatro opções, a emoção expressa pelo olhar.…”

Can Older People See Something Apart from Themselves?

“…On one hand, Happé et al [9] argued that ToM ability improved over the life span; on the other, Maylor et al's [10] findings implied that ToM ability decreased with age. Sullivan and Ruffman [15] tried to solve this dilemma by attributing the contradictory results to methodological reasons. They conducted another study, which yielded results similar to those of Maylor et al [10].…”