Cardiorespiratory Fitness and Muscular Strength Do Not Predict Social Cognitive Capacity in Older Age.

OBJECTIVES: Social cognitive function often declines in older age but the mechanisms underlying these declines are not completely clear. Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) and muscular strength are positively associated with broader cognitive function in older adults, yet surprisingly, no study has examined whether a similar relationship exists between CRF or muscular strength and social cognition in older age. METHODS: We assessed whether higher CRF and muscular strength were associated with enhanced social cognitive function in a sample of fifty older adults (Mage = 70.08, standard deviation = 3.93). Participants completed a gold-standard cardiopulmonary exercise test to assess CRF, an isometric handgrip strength test to index muscular strength, and validated measures of social cognition to index emotion perception and theory of mind (ToM). RESULTS: The results showed that CRF and muscular strength did not explain any unique variance in older adults' social cognitive performance. Bayesian analyses confirmed that the evidence for the null hypothesis was moderate for all tested relationships, except for the relationship between CRF and cognitive ToM where the evidence for the null was anecdotal. DISCUSSION: This study has provided the first evidence to suggest that CRF and muscular strength-two important modifiable lifestyle factors-are not associated with social cognition in healthy older adults. However, replication studies are now needed to cross-validate these findings and to clarify whether any moderating variables may be important for understanding the relationship between fitness and social cognition in older age.

Enhancing ecological validity of gaze-cueing stimuli is associated with increased gaze following for older but not younger adults.

Gaze following is a core social-cognitive capacity. Previous work has shown that older adults have reduced gaze following relative to younger adults. However, all previous studies have exclusively used stimuli with low ecological validity, leaving room for alternative explanations for the observed age effects. Motivational models suggest that, relative to younger adults, older adults expend cognitive resources more selectively, such that they are less motivated to engage in tasks that are not meaningful or personally relevant. This may explain why their gaze following is reduced when stimuli are low in ecological validity. An expertise-based account suggests that older adults will have enhanced gaze following owing to their greater experience with gaze cues but that this enhancement may only emerge when stimuli are naturalistic and match those that they have more experience with. In the present study, younger (N = 63) and older adults (N = 68) completed a standard gaze-cueing task (static images) and a gaze-cueing task with enhanced ecological validity (videos of shifting gaze). In contrast to past research, both groups showed equivalent gaze following. Notably, in line with motivational model theorizing and experience-based accounts, ecological validity was associated with enhanced gaze following for older but not younger adults. These findings highlight the importance of considering stimulus ecological validity in social-cognitive aging research and provide information regarding the specific types of gaze cues that may be most effective in producing the cognitive and perceptual benefits associated with gaze cues for older adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The cognitive tenacity of self-directed ageism.

Ageism refers to prejudice or discrimination based on a person's age. When ageism is directed at older people, it is unique in two ways: it is socially condoned in a manner that other types of prejudice are not, and the animus is eventually self-directed. Of central interest here is why ageism becomes self-directed in late adulthood, despite its potentially harmful personal costs. We present a cognitive model in which negative ageist beliefs become increasingly accessible and difficult to eliminate owing to broader developmental shifts in mentation. Given that these effects are contingent on our social environment, systemic changes in societal conceptions of age and aging are needed if we are to reduce vulnerability to self-directed ageism.

Emotion regulation mediates the relationship between social frailty and stress, anxiety, and depression.

Social frailty refers to an inability to meet basic social needs and has been identified as a threat to physical and mental health. Although social frailty has been linked with many adverse health and well-being outcomes, potential mediators of the relationship between social frailty and well-being remain poorly understood. Emotion regulation refers to the capacity to alter the experience of emotions to behave in accordance with a desired goal. The present study was designed to provide the first direct test of whether emotion regulation mediates the relationships between social frailty and important well-being outcomes (stress, anxiety, and depression). A total of 790 participants completed validated measures of social frailty, stress, anxiety, depression, and emotion regulation. In line with our preregistered hypotheses, higher social frailty predicted increased stress, anxiety, and depression, and each of these relationships were partially mediated by emotion regulation capacity. These data provide novel evidence that emotion regulation abilities may serve as a protective factor against the negative consequences of social frailty.

Subjective and objective sleep quality does not predict behavioural episodic foresight in younger or older adults.

Episodic foresight refers to one's capacity to use imagined scenarios to guide future-directed behaviors. It is important in facilitating complex activities of daily living, such as managing finances. Broader literature shows that older adults perform more poorly on tests of episodic foresight relative to their younger counterparts. At the same time, age-related changes in sleep often contribute to age-related decline in other cognitive abilities known to support episodic foresight, such as memory. No study to date has tested whether sleep quality is associated with episodic foresight when it is measured behaviorally; or whether this relationship is moderated by age. To address this, in the present study healthy younger (n = 39) and older (n = 41) adults were asked to wear an actigraphy watch and self-report their sleep quality for seven nights. Participants then completed the virtual-week foresight task-a behavioral assessment of episodic foresight. Neither objective or subjective sleep quality predicted episodic foresight outcomes, and this was not moderated by age group. Bayesian analyses provided evidence in favour of the null hypotheses. These results suggest that sleep quality (at least in healthy adult populations) may not be linked to episodic foresight.

Absence of age differences in emotion perception and gaze patterns using a contextually rich film-based assessment.

Age differences in emotion perception are now well documented. However, a key limitation of many studies in this literature is the reliance on highly artificial tasks that lack context and consequently have poor ecological validity. This study reports two separate experiments that investigated age differences in emotion perception abilities using a highly contextualised film-based assessment along with a traditional emotion perception task. Experiment 2 additionally included a middle-aged sample and an assessment of eye-gaze patterns to the emotional films. The inclusion of eye-tracking in Experiment 2 was motivated by the fact that older adults consistently show visual biases to static emotion stimuli, yet it remains unclear whether biases also emerge in response to dynamic contextualised emotion stimuli. Experiment 1 identified age effects recognising displays of anger in the traditional emotion perception task but no age differences emerged on the film-based task. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2 with significant group differences on the traditional emotion perception task but no age differences on the film-based task. Experiment 2 also showed that there were no age differences in gaze patterns to these stimuli, showing for the first time that age-related visual biases to emotion stimuli may be task dependent. These findings highlight the fact that task-related features play a key role in the evaluation of age effects in emotion perception.

Emotion regulation mediates the effects of sleep on stress and aggression.

It is well established that poor sleep directly increases stress and aggression, but potential mediators of this relationship remain poorly understood. The present study provided the first direct test of whether capacity for emotion regulation mediated the relationship between sleep with stress. It also aimed to extend current understanding of whether emotion regulation might mediate the association between sleep and aggression, by assessing four distinct subcomponents of aggression (anger, hostility, verbal aggression, and physical aggression). In service of these goals, 740 participants completed validated measures of sleep, stress, aggression, and emotion regulation. Results showed that emotion regulation partially mediated the relationship between sleep quality with stress, anger, hostility, and verbal aggression, and fully mediated the relationship between sleep with physical aggression. These data provide novel evidence that emotion regulation abilities may serve as a protective factor against the negative consequences of sleep disturbances.

Measuring Empathy Across the Adult Lifespan: A Comparison of Three Assessment Types.

Empathy is a core component of social cognition that can be indexed via behavioral, informant-report, or self-report methods of assessment. However, concerns have been raised regarding the lack of convergence between these assessment approaches for cognitive empathy. Here, we provided the first comparison of all three measurement approaches for cognitive and affective empathy in a large adult sample (N = 371) aged 18 to 101 years. We found that poor convergence was more of a problem for cognitive empathy than affective empathy. While none of the cognitive empathy measures correlated with each other, for affective empathy, self-report was significantly associated with both behavioral and informant-report assessments. However, for both cognitive and affective empathy, there was evidence for poor discriminant validity within the measures. Out of the three assessment approaches, only the informant-report measures were consistently associated with indices of social functioning. Importantly, age did not moderate any of the tested relationships, indicating that both the strengths and the limitations of these different types of assessment do not appear to vary as a function of age. These findings highlight the variation that exists among empathy measures and are discussed in relation to their practical implications for the assessment of empathy.

Aging Is Associated With Multidirectional Changes in Social Cognition: Findings From an Adult Life-Span Sample Ranging From 18 to 101 Years.

OBJECTIVES: Normal adult aging is associated with changes in social cognition. Although 4 social cognitive domains have been identified (social perception, theory of mind [ToM], affective empathy, and social behavior), no study has tested all 4 domains concurrently in a life-span sample, limiting understanding of the relative magnitude of age-related changes across domains. This study addresses this gap by providing the first assessment of all 4 social cognitive domains in an adult life-span sample. METHODS: Three hundred and seventy-two participants ranging from 18 to 101 years of age took part in this study. Participants completed a testing battery that assessed social perception, ToM, affective empathy, and social behavior, as well as broader cognitive function and well-being. RESULTS: The results showed that adult aging is associated with multidirectional changes in social cognitive abilities, with ToM and social perception showing nonlinear decline across much of the life-span, and affective empathy and social behavior showing improvement. Age remained a significant predictor of all 4 social cognitive domains, even after accounting for broader cognitive function. Weak associations emerged between some of the social cognitive abilities and and indices of broader well-being. DISCUSSION: These findings provide novel and important evidence that normative aging is associated with both gains and losses in social cognition that occur at distinct points of the adult life-span, and that are at least partially independent of general age-related cognitive decline.

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.

Social Frailty in Late Adulthood: Social Cognitive and Psychological Well-Being Correlates.

OBJECTIVES: Social frailty poses a major threat to successful aging, but its social cognitive and psychological well-being correlates remain poorly understood. This cross-sectional study provides initial insights into whether social cognitive difficulties in older age are associated with social frailty, as well as how social frailty is linked to psychological characteristics known to be important for health and well-being. METHOD: Ninety community-dwelling older adults completed measures of social frailty and social cognition (social perception, theory of mind, affective empathy, and informant-rated social behavior) as well as measures of psychological function known to be important for health and well-being, both positively (resilience and life satisfaction) and negatively (demoralization, social anxiety, and apathy). Measures of cognitive frailty, physical frailty, and depression were also administered to test the specificity of any observed relationships with social frailty. RESULTS: Both affective empathy and social behavior were predictive of increased social frailty, but social behavior emerged as the only unique predictor after controlling for covariates. Social frailty also predicted unique variance in all five measures of psychological well-being, and for three of these measures (demoralization, resilience, and life satisfaction), the effects remained significant even after adjusting for covariates. DISCUSSION: Findings are discussed in relation to models of socioemotional aging and frailty. Potential mechanisms linking social behavior to social capital in older age are identified, as well as how loss of social resources might both directly and indirectly impact well-being.

Sleep, stress and aggression: Meta-analyses investigating associations and causality.

Prior research suggests that sleep is associated with increased subjective stress and aggression, but important questions remain about the typical magnitude of these relationships, as well as their potential moderators. We therefore conducted the first meta-analysis of this literature. Across 340 associational and experimental studies, significant associations were identified between sleep with both subjective stress (r = 0.307, p < .001) and aggression (r = 0.258, p < .001) in individuals from the general population, as well as between sleep with subjective stress (r = 0.425, p < .001) in individuals with sleep disorders. Experimental sleep restriction also led to increased subjective stress (g = 0.403, p = .017) and aggression (g = 0.330, p = .042). These findings suggest that poorer sleep is associated with - and leads to - heightened levels of subjective stress and aggression. These findings, and their implications, are discussed in relation to neurobiological literature, which highlights the complex interplay between metabolic activity in the brain, hormonal changes, and behavior.

How Does Aging Affect Social Attention? A Test of Competing Theories Using Multilevel Meta-Analysis.

OBJECTIVES: The present study provides a meta-analytic assessment of how gaze-cued attention-a core social-cognitive process-is influenced by normal adult aging. METHODS: A multilevel meta-analysis of standardized mean changes was conducted on gaze-cueing effects. Age effects were quantified as standardized mean differences in gaze-cueing effect sizes between young and older adult samples. RESULTS: We identified 82 gaze-cueing effects (k = 26, N = 919 participants). Of these, 37 were associated with young adults (k = 12, n = 438) and 45 with older adults (k = 14, n = 481). Relative to younger adults, older adults had a reduced gaze-cueing effect overall, g = -0.59, with this age effect greater when the cues were predictive, g = -3.24, rather than nonpredictive, g = -0.78. DISCUSSION: These results provide the clearest evidence to date that adult aging is associated with a reduction in gaze-cued attention. The results also speak to potential mechanisms of this age effect. In line with cognitive decline models of aging, it was demonstrated that when gaze cues were predictive, only younger adults seem to benefit, suggesting that older adults exhibit a particularly reduced capacity to use gaze cues volitionally.

Profiling Social Cognition in Premanifest Huntington's Disease.

OBJECTIVE: Discrepancies exist in reports of social cognition deficits in individuals with premanifest Huntington's disease (HD); however, the reason for this variability has not been investigated. The aims of this study were to (1) evaluate group- and individual-level social cognitive performance and (2) examine intra-individual variability (dispersion) across social cognitive domains in individuals with premanifest HD. METHOD: Theory of mind (ToM), social perception, empathy, and social connectedness were evaluated in 35 individuals with premanifest HD and 29 healthy controls. Cut-off values beneath the median and 1.5 × the interquartile range below the 25th percentile (P25 - 1.5 × IQR) of healthy controls for each variable were established for a profiling method. Dispersion between social cognitive domains was also calculated. RESULTS: Compared to healthy controls, individuals with premanifest HD performed worse on all social cognitive domains except empathy. Application of the profiling method revealed a large proportion of people with premanifest HD fell below healthy control median values across ToM (>80%), social perception (>57%), empathy (>54%), and social behaviour (>40%), with a percentage of these individuals displaying more pronounced impairments in empathy (20%) and ToM (22%). Social cognition dispersion did not differ between groups. No significant correlations were found between social cognitive domains and mood, sleep, and neurocognitive outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Significant group-level social cognition deficits were observed in the premanifest HD cohort. However, our profiling method showed that only a small percentage of these individuals experienced marked difficulties in social cognition, indicating the importance of individual-level assessments, particularly regarding future personalised treatments.

The influence of rs53576 polymorphism in the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene on empathy in healthy adults by subtype and ethnicity: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Empathy is essential for navigating complex social environments. Prior work has shown associations between rs53576, a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) located in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR), and generalized empathy. We undertook a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the effects of rs53576 on subdomains of empathy, specifically cognitive empathy (CE) and affective empathy (AE), in healthy adults. Twenty cohorts of 8933 participants aged 18-98 were identified, including data from the Sydney Memory and Ageing Study, a cohort of older community adults. Meta-analyses found G homozygotes had greater generalized empathic abilities only in young to middle-aged adults. While meta-analyses of empathy subdomains yielded no significant overall effects, there were differential effects based on ethnicity. G homozygotes were associated with greater CE abilities in Asian cohorts (standardized mean difference; SMD: 0.09 [2.8·10-3-0.18]), and greater AE performance in European cohorts [SMD: 0.12 (0.04-0.21)]. The current literature highlights a need for further work that distinguishes between genetic and ethnocultural effects and explores effects of advanced age on this relationship.

Tears of sadness reduce others' gazing toward the eyes.

Emotional tears enhance perceptions of sadness and promote helping behaviors, but it is yet to be established whether they also influence the way we gaze at emotional faces. This is an important question to address given that how people visually attend to faces plays a critical role during social interaction and may also be used to regulate emotional arousal. We used eye-tracking to quantify the time spent gazing to the eyes and mouths of emotional faces. Participants' (N = 131) gaze patterns were monitored while they viewed stimuli that were manipulated to have tears present or absent. The key finding to emerge was that participants gazed less at the eyes of faces when tears were present compared with absent, suggesting that perceiving tears may be emotionally aversive. These findings are discussed in relation to prior work that suggests eye-gaze is used to regulate emotional arousal. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Affective empathy in neurodegenerative disorders: The importance of measurement type.

In recent years, there has been increasing attention focused on affective empathy in neurodegenerative disorders (NDs). However, prior studies have identified discrepancies not only between, but sometimes within, specific NDs. These discrepancies may reflect methodological differences in how affective empathy has been operationalized, with three quite distinct approaches to assessment possible (self-report, informant-report and performance-based). Therefore, we conducted the first meta-analytic review of affective empathy in people with NDs, that considered the potential moderating role of measurement type. Across 27 studies that included 1456 people with NDs and 832 controls, the results showed that most NDs are associated with impaired affective empathy, but that the magnitude of these difficulties differs meaningfully across disorders. However, most importantly, the results indicated that measurement type is a critical consideration in this literature, with substantive differences emerging for self- versus informant-rated measures. These results are discussed in relation to their practical implications for clinical assessment, as well as how they help to inform current theoretical understanding of affective empathic processing.

The relationship between testosterone and social cognition in younger and older adults.

Testosterone (T) has been linked to poorer social cognition in younger adults. Because social cognition and T both decline with normal aging, a different type of relationship may exist between T and social cognition in late adulthood. To test this possibility, younger and older adults provided a salivary T sample and completed two social cognition tasks. The results showed that age-group was a significant moderator in the relationship between T and theory of mind (ToM) performance for males, such that T was a negative predictor of ToM in younger males and a positive predictor of ToM in older age. No relationships were identified for females. These findings show for the first time that T is differentially related to ToM in the early and later stages of the male adult lifespan, and are discussed in relation to prior work that suggests T may have neuroprotective effects in older age.

Acting with the future in mind: Testing competing prospective memory interventions.

Prospective memory (PM) is a critical determinant of whether a person is able to lead an independent life. Because PM declines in late adulthood, an important question is therefore whether, and if so, which types, of PM interventions might lead to meaningful benefits. In the present study, we randomly assigned older adults to one of four conditions, in three of which participants received a structured PM intervention (Restorative, Compensatory, and Combined Restorative and Compensatory); the fourth was an Active Control condition. The results showed that there were significant gains on the PM training task used for both the Restorative and Combined conditions. We then analyzed change in PM tasks that were independent of the PM training task (Near Transfer). Only the Combined condition led to post-training improvement. Finally, we analyzed performance on measures of untrained cognitive abilities and everyday functioning: Far transfer effects were not evident for any intervention. These data align with prior literature in showing that interventions that target a single cognitive ability do not reliably generate far transfer effects, and additionally extend our understanding of these effects in two important ways. Firstly, they indicate that, even when the memory challenges that older adults are most concerned about are the direct target of restorative training, transfer effects to untrained cognitive domains may be difficult to achieve. Secondly, they indicate that for older adults whose primary goal is to enhance PM function, combining Restorative and Compensatory approaches is an effective approach. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Event-Based but Not Time-Based Prospective Memory Is Related to Oral Health in Late Adulthood.

BACKGROUND: Most evidence now indicates that cognitive function is related to poorer oral health in late adulthood, but that this relationship is not invariant across specific cognitive domains. Prospective memory (PM) is a core memory skill that refers to memory for future intentions and is known to be related to the formation of habits such as tooth flossing. However, the relationship between PM and oral health has been subject to only limited empirical study. OBJECTIVE: The two studies reported in this paper were designed to test whether PM is related to oral health in older adults of varying vulnerability status. METHODS: Study 1 sampled community-dwelling older adults (N = 172) living independently in the community; Study 2 sampled older adults living in a retirement village (N = 32). Participants in both studies were asked to complete a behavioural measure of PM, with their oral health indexed via self-report (Study 1) or an objective oral health exam (Study 2). RESULTS: In both studies, relationships emerged between event-based PM and oral health, with Study 2 showing that these relationships were specific to oral health measures of plaque and calculus. CONCLUSIONS: Older adults are particularly vulnerable to dental pathology, with important implications for their broader health and well-being. By showing that there is a relationship between oral health and a particular type of PM, this work will have potential implications for the development of more effective interventions focused on enhancing oral health outcomes in this group, such as those focused on strengthening habit formation.