The getting of wisdom: Theory of mind in old age.

Abstract

Theory of mind, the ability to attribute mental states, has been little explored beyond the early school years. Yet, later development, including possible patterns of breakdown, has important implications for current debate concerning the modularity/domain-specincity of the cognitive and neurological systems underlying theory of mind. This article reports a first study of theory of mind in normal aging. The results suggest that although performance on tasks with nonmental content may decrease with age, performance on theory of mind tasks remains intact and may even improve over the later adult years. The implications of these findings for the cognitive processes underlying theory of mind are discussed.

Can Older People See Something Apart from Themselves?

“…This finding was clearer when ToM ability was mediated by memory ability. The contribution of memory ability to ToM task performance, however, was unclear; therefore, Mayor et al conducted another study that replicated the experiment conducted by Happé et al [9], this time using the same stories used by Happé et al, which didn't require the use of memory abilities. The second study yielded a negative correlation between ToM ability and participant age, even when the variable of memory ability was held constant [10].…”

“…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.…”

“…The life experience of older adults as well as maturity may be resilience factors for better social understanding; on the other hand, cognitive deficiency may lead to misunderstanding of social situations [14]. Happé et al [9] found that people who are 61 to 68 years of age have ToM ability, and that their ability is better than that of people who are 21 to 30 years old. Happé et al explained their findings in terms of older people's broader experiences of social situations, by which they learn to understand the mental states of others.…”

“…People infer ToM to mean the ability to use a system of conceptualizations about states of mind such as the beliefs, thoughts, intentions, and desires of another person [9]- [11]. ToM enables an individual to explain his own behavior and to predict the behaviors of others while relying on mental states [11].…”

Dyadic drumming across the lifespan reveals a zone of proximal development in children.

“…Empirical findings from previous research suggest that taskrelevant sensorimotor abilities and experience-based social skills improve throughout childhood and peak in younger adulthood, followed by an aging-related decline (e.g., Drewing et al, 2006;Happé et al, 1998;Krampe, Engbert, & Kliegel, 2002;Pouthas et al, 1998). Hence, we hypothesized that younger adults would show the highest levels of IAS accuracy, especially when synchronizing with a partner of their own age group.…”