Now you feel it, now you don't: Motivated attention to emotional content is modulated by age and task demands.

Several studies with younger adults have examined the degree to which emotion captures attention using the event-related potentials (ERP) technique, but it is unknown whether there are age-related differences on this issue. We examined ERP correlates of age-related differences in processing of task-relevant and task-irrelevant emotional material. Participants viewed emotional or neutral images, presented at fixation, flanked by two bars of either differing or matching orientation. In one set of trials, participants decided whether the pictures were presented in black-and-white or color; in another set of trials, they made a match/judgment on the flanking bars. Before the experiment proper, we determined each individual's threshold for line orientation (in the presence of neutral pictures at fixation); mismatch bar stimuli were constructed using this threshold, thus equating baseline performance on the bar tasks across individuals. When attention was focused on the images, ERPs provided evidence for emotion-based processing in the younger group, regardless of valence; older adults showed more differentiated valence-based processing as reflected by a positivity effect (in line with socioemotional selectivity theory). When the images were task-irrelevant, older adults showed no evidence of emotional processing whatsoever; younger adults showed a pattern of suppression in the form of reduced processing of emotional material relative to neutral images. These findings suggest that, once performance on a neutral baseline task is equated, older adults do not exhibit a specific age-related deficit in inhibiting emotional material; they also suggest qualitative differences in processing of to-be-ignored emotional material in younger and older adults.

Effects of self-referencing on feeling-of-knowing accuracy and recollective experience.

The current research investigated the impact of self-referencing (SR) on feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgements to improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying these metamemory judgements and specifically test the relationship between recollective experiences and FOK accuracy within the accessibility framework FOK judgements are thought to be by-products of the retrieval process and are therefore closely related to memory performance. Because relating information to one's self is one of the factors enhancing memory performance, we investigated the effect of self-related encoding on FOK accuracy and recollective experience. We compared performance on this condition to a separate deep processing condition in which participants reported the frequency of occurrence of pairs of words. Participants encoded pairs of words incidentally, and following a delay interval, they attempted at retrieving each target prompted by its cue. Then, they were re-presented with all cues and asked to provide FOK ratings regarding their likelihood of recognising the targets amongst distractors. Finally, they were given a surprise recognition task in which following each response they identified whether the response was remembered, known or just guessed. Our results showed that only SR at encoding resulted in better memory, higher FOK accuracy and increased recollective experience.

Effects of chronic intranasal oxytocin on visual attention to faces vs. natural scenes in older adults.

Aging is associated with changes in face processing, including desensitization to face cues like gaze direction and an attentional preference to faces with positive over negative emotional valence. A parallel line of research has shown that acute administration of oxytocin (OT) increases visual attention to social stimuli such as human faces. The current study examined effects of chronic OT administration among older adults on fixation duration to faces that varied in emotional expression, gaze direction, age, and sex. One hundred and twelve generally healthy older adults (aged 55-95 years) underwent a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, between-subject clinical trial in which they self-administered either OT or placebo (P) intranasally twice a day for 4 weeks. The behavioral task involved rating the trustworthiness of faces (i.e., social stimuli) and natural scenes (i.e., non-social control stimuli) during eye tracking and was conducted before and after the intervention. Fixation duration to both the faces and the natural scenes declined from pre- to post-intervention, however this decline was less pronounced among older adults in the OT compared to the P group for faces but not scenes. Further, face cues (emotional expression, gaze direction, age, sex) did not moderate the treatment effect. This study provides first evidence that chronic intranasal OT maintains salience of social cues over time in older adults, perhaps buffering effects of habituation. These findings enhance understanding of OT effects on social cognition among older adults, and would benefit from follow up with a young adult comparison group to directly speak to specificity of observed effects to older adults and reflection of the aging process.

Financial Fraud and Deception in Aging.

Financial exploitation among older adults is a significant concern with often devastating consequences for individuals and society. Deception plays a critical role in financial exploitation, and detecting deception is challenging, especially for older adults. Susceptibility to deception in older adults is heightened by age-related changes in cognition, such as declines in processing speed and working memory, as well as socioemotional factors, including positive affect and social isolation. Additionally, neurobiological changes with age, such as reduced cortical volume and altered functional connectivity, are associated with declining deception detection and increased risk for financial exploitation among older adults. Furthermore, characteristics of deceptive messages, such as personal relevance and framing, as well as visual cues such as faces, can influence deception detection. Understanding the multifaceted factors that contribute to deception risk in aging is crucial for developing interventions and strategies to protect older adults from financial exploitation. Tailored approaches, including age-specific warnings and harmonizing artificial intelligence as well as human-centered approaches, can help mitigate the risks and protect older adults from fraud.

Facial Trustworthiness Perception Across the Adult Life Span.

OBJECTIVES: Trust is crucial for successful social interaction across the life span. Perceiver age, facial age, and facial emotion have been shown to influence trustworthiness perception, but the complex interplay between these perceiver and facial characteristics has not been examined. METHOD: Adopting an adult life-span developmental approach, 199 adults (aged 22-78 years) rated the trustworthiness of faces that systematically varied in age (young, middle-aged, and older) and emotion (neutral, happy, sad, fearful, angry, and disgusted) from the FACES Lifespan Database. RESULTS: The study yielded three key results. First, on an aggregated level, facial trustworthiness perception did not differ by perceiver age. Second, all perceivers rated young faces as the most trustworthy, and middle-aged and older (but not young) perceivers rated older faces as least trustworthy. Third, facial emotions signaling threat (fear, anger, and disgust) relative to neutral, happy, and sad expressions moderated age effects on facial trustworthiness perception. DISCUSSION: Findings from this study highlight the impact of perceiver and facial characteristics on facial trustworthiness perception in adulthood and aging and have potential to inform first impression formation, with effects on trait attributions and behavior. This publication also provides normative data on perceived facial trustworthiness for the FACES Lifespan Database.

Aging in an "infodemic": The role of analytical reasoning, affect, and news consumption frequency on news veracity detection.

Increasing misinformation spread poses a threat to older adults but there is little research on older adults within the fake news literature. Embedded in the Changes in Integration for Social Decisions in Aging (CISDA) model, this study examined the role of (a) analytical reasoning; (b) affect; (c) news consumption frequency, and their interplay with (d) news content on news veracity detection in aging. Conducted during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, the present study asked participants to view and evaluate COVID or non-COVID (i.e., everyday) news articles, followed by measures of analytical reasoning, affect, and news consumption frequency. News veracity detection was comparable between young and older adults. Additionally, fake news detection for non-COVID news was predicted by individual differences in analytic reasoning for both age groups. However, chronological age effects in fake news detection emerged within the older adult sample and interacted with the CISDA-derived components of analytical reasoning, affect, and news consumption frequency by news content. Collectively, these findings suggest that age-related vulnerabilities to deceptive news are only apparent in very old age. Our findings advance understanding of psychological mechanisms in news veracity detection in aging. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Age-Related Differences in Amygdala Activation Associated With Face Trustworthiness but No Evidence of Oxytocin Modulation.

The amygdala has been shown to be responsive to face trustworthiness. While older adults typically give higher face trustworthiness ratings than young adults, a direct link between amygdala response and age-related differences in face trustworthiness evaluation has not yet been confirmed. Additionally, there is a possible modulatory role of the neuropeptide oxytocin in face trustworthiness evaluation, but the results are mixed and effects unexplored in aging. To address these research gaps, young, and older adults were randomly assigned to oxytocin or placebo self-administration via a nasal spray before rating faces on trustworthiness while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. There was no overall age-group difference in face trustworthiness ratings, but older compared to young participants gave higher trustworthiness ratings to ambivalently untrustworthy-looking faces. In both age groups, lower face trustworthiness ratings were associated with higher left amygdala activity. A comparable negative linear association was observed in right amygdala but only among young participants. Also, in the right amygdala, lower and higher, compared to moderate, face trustworthiness ratings were associated with greater right amygdala activity (i.e., positive quadratic (U-shaped) association) for both age groups. Neither the behavioral nor the brain effects were modulated by a single dose of intranasal oxytocin administration, however. These results suggest dampened response to faces with lower trustworthiness among older compared to young adults, supporting the notion of reduced sensitivity to cues of untrustworthiness in aging. The findings also extend evidence of an age-related positivity effect to the evaluation of face trustworthiness.

The role of analytical reasoning and source credibility on the evaluation of real and fake full-length news articles.

AIM: Previous research has focused on accuracy associated with real and fake news presented in the form of news headlines only, which does not capture the rich context news is frequently encountered in real life. Additionally, while previous studies on evaluation of real and fake news have mostly focused on characteristics of the evaluator (i.e., analytical reasoning), characteristics of the news stimuli (i.e., news source credibility) and the interplay between the two have been largely ignored. To address these research gaps, this project examined the role of analytical reasoning and news source credibility on evaluation of real and fake full-length news story articles. The project considered both accuracy and perceived credibility ratings as outcome variables, thus qualifying previous work focused solely on news detection accuracy. METHOD: We conducted two independent but parallel studies, with Study 2 as a direct replication of Study 1, employing the same design but in a larger sample (Study 1: N = 292 vs. Study 2: N = 357). In both studies, participants viewed 12 full-length news articles (6 real, 6 fake), followed by prompts to evaluate each article's veracity and credibility. Participants were randomly assigned to view articles with a credible or non-credible source and completed the Cognitive Reflection Test as well as short demographic questions. FINDINGS: Consistent across both studies, higher analytical reasoning was associated with greater fake news accuracy, while analytical reasoning was not associated with real news accuracy. In addition, in both studies, higher analytical reasoning was associated with lower perceived credibility for fake news, while analytical reasoning was not associated with perceived credibility for real news. Furthermore, lower analytical reasoning was associated with greater accuracy for real (but not fake) news from credible compared to non-credible sources, with this effect only detected in Study 2. CONCLUSIONS: The novel results generated in this research are discussed in light of classical vs. naturalistic accounts of decision-making as well as cognitive processes underlying news articles evaluation. The results extend previous findings that analytical reasoning contributes to fake news detection to full-length news articles. Furthermore, news-related cues such as the credibility of the news source systematically affected discrimination ability between real and fake news.

Tri-Phasic Model ofOxytocin (TRIO): A systematic conceptual review of oxytocin-related ERP research.

BACKGROUND: The neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) has been shown to play a role in variety of cognitive and social processes and different hypotheses have been put forth to explain OT's effects on brain and behavior in humans. However, these previous explanatory accounts do not provide information about OT-related temporal modulation in the brain. OBJECTIVES: This paper systematically reviewed intranasal OT administration studies employing event-related potentials (ERPs) and synthesized the existing evidence into a novel conceptual framework. METHODS: Empirical studies, published until February 2020 and cited in major databases (EBSCOhost, PubMed, and Web of Science), were examined in accordance with PRISMA guidelines. To be included, studies had to: (i) employ intranasal administration of OT, as the chemical modulator; (ii) measure ERPs; (iii) be peer-reviewed journal articles; (iv) be written in English; and (v) examine human participants. RESULTS: The search criteria yielded 17 empirical studies. The systematic review resulted in conceptualization of the Tri-Phasic Model ofOxytocin (TRIO), which builds on three processing stages: (i) perception, (ii) selection, and (iii) evaluation. While OT increases attention irrespective of stimuli characteristics in the perception stage, in the selection and evaluation stages, OT acts as a filter to guide attention selectively towards social over non-social stimuli and modulates prosociality/approach motivation associated with social stimuli. CONCLUSIONS: TRIO offers an empirically-derived conceptual framework that can guide the study of OT-related modulation on attentional processes, starting very early in the processing stream. This novel account furthers theoretical understanding and informs empirical investigation into OT modulation on the brain.

The Role of Intranasal Oxytocin on Social Cognition: An Integrative Human Lifespan Approach.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This narrative review synthesizes research from the last two decades on the modulatory role of intranasal OT administration (IN-OT) on social cognition in early life, young/middle adulthood, and older adulthood. Advances and knowledge gaps are identified, and future research directions are discussed within an integrative human lifespan framework to guide novel research on IN-OT and social cognition. RECENT FINDINGS: Current evidence regarding IN-OT modulation of social-cognitive processes, behavior, and related neurocircuitry is mixed, with some studies suggesting benefits (e.g., improved social perception/interactions, emotion processing) depending on contextual (e.g., social stimuli) and interindividual factors (e.g., age, sex, clinical status). Current research, however, is limited by a focus on isolated life phases, males, and select clinical populations as well as a lack of standardized protocols. SUMMARY: This literature-based reflection proposes that greater generalizability of findings and scientific advancement on social-cognitive modulation via IN-OT require standardized, multi-method, longitudinal, and cross-sequential assessments in well-powered, well-controlled, and representative samples in line with an integrative lifespan approach, which considers development as a lifelong dynamic process involving both change and stability characterized by the interplay between genetic, neurobiological, and socio-behavioral factors.

Multiple identity tracking strategies vary by age: An ERP study.

Top-down modulation underlies our ability to focus attention on task-relevant stimuli and ignore irrelevant distractions. Although age-related differences in neural correlates of top-down modulation have been investigated in multiple studies using variety of tasks (Gazzaley et al., 2005; Störmer et al., 2013), the effect of age on top-down modulation in a multiple identity tracking (MIT) task is still unknown. Thus, we investigated age-related differences in the MIT task by employing event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants tracked ten uniquely colored disks, two of which were randomly designated as targets at the beginning of each trial; the targets moved among four stationary distractors (serving as ERP baseline) and four moving distractors. Each type of stimulus was probed during the trial to capture differential patterns of brain activation. Tracking performance was similar across age groups. ERP data showed that younger adults performed the MIT task by enhancing the unique identities associated with targets relative to distractors through feature-based tracking. Older adults showed a pattern of distractor suppression engaging both location- and feature-based tracking strategies. Thus, our findings suggest that compared to younger adults, older adults engage greater levels of neural activity to achieve the same level of performance. These findings are discussed in light of theories of cognitive aging.

The ties to unbind: age-related differences in feature (un)binding in working memory for emotional faces.

In the present study, we investigated age-related differences in the processing of emotional stimuli. Specifically, we were interested in whether older adults would show deficits in unbinding emotional expression (i.e., either no emotion, happiness, anger, or disgust) from bound stimuli (i.e., photographs of faces expressing these emotions), as a hyper-binding account of age-related differences in working memory would predict. Younger and older adults completed different N-Back tasks (side-by-side 0-Back, 1-Back, 2-Back) under three conditions: match/mismatch judgments based on either the identity of the face (identity condition), the face's emotional expression (expression condition), or both identity and expression of the face (both condition). The two age groups performed more slowly and with lower accuracy in the expression condition than in the both condition, indicating the presence of an unbinding process. This unbinding effect was more pronounced in older adults than in younger adults, but only in the 2-Back task. Thus, older adults seemed to have a specific deficit in unbinding in working memory. Additionally, no age-related differences were found in accuracy in the 0-Back task, but such differences emerged in the 1-Back task, and were further magnified in the 2-Back task, indicating independent age-related differences in attention/STM and working memory. Pupil dilation data confirmed that the attention/STM version of the task (1-Back) is more effortful for older adults than younger adults.