sj-docx-3-jbd-10.1177_01650254231160126 – Supplemental material for Too easy, too hard, or just right: Lifespan age differences and gender effects on task difficulty choices

Supplemental material, sj-docx-3-jbd-10.1177_01650254231160126 for Too easy, too hard, or just right: Lifespan age differences and gender effects on task difficulty choices by Sabine Schaefer, Michaela Riediger, Shu-Chen Li and Ulman Lindenberger in International Journal of Behavioral Development</p

sj-docx-1-jbd-10.1177_01650254231160126 – Supplemental material for Too easy, too hard, or just right: Lifespan age differences and gender effects on task difficulty choices

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-jbd-10.1177_01650254231160126 for Too easy, too hard, or just right: Lifespan age differences and gender effects on task difficulty choices by Sabine Schaefer, Michaela Riediger, Shu-Chen Li and Ulman Lindenberger in International Journal of Behavioral Development</p

sj-docx-2-jbd-10.1177_01650254231160126 – Supplemental material for Too easy, too hard, or just right: Lifespan age differences and gender effects on task difficulty choices

Supplemental material, sj-docx-2-jbd-10.1177_01650254231160126 for Too easy, too hard, or just right: Lifespan age differences and gender effects on task difficulty choices by Sabine Schaefer, Michaela Riediger, Shu-Chen Li and Ulman Lindenberger in International Journal of Behavioral Development</p

sj-docx-4-jbd-10.1177_01650254231160126 – Supplemental material for Too easy, too hard, or just right: Lifespan age differences and gender effects on task difficulty choices

Supplemental material, sj-docx-4-jbd-10.1177_01650254231160126 for Too easy, too hard, or just right: Lifespan age differences and gender effects on task difficulty choices by Sabine Schaefer, Michaela Riediger, Shu-Chen Li and Ulman Lindenberger in International Journal of Behavioral Development</p

Cortical processes of multisensory plausibility modulation of vibrotactile perception in virtual environments in middled-aged and older adults

AbstractDigital technologies, such as virtual or augmented reality, can potentially support neurocognitive functions of the aging populations worldwide and complement existing intervention methods. However, aging-related declines in the frontal-parietal network and dopaminergic modulation which progress gradually across the later periods of the adult lifespan may affect the processing of multisensory congruence and expectancy based contextual plausibility. We assessed hemodynamic brain responses while middle-aged and old adults experienced car-riding virtual-reality scenarios where the plausibility of vibrotactile stimulations was manipulated by delivering stimulus intensities that were either congruent or incongruent with the digitalized audio-visual contexts of the respective scenarios. Relative to previous findings observed in young adults, although highly plausible vibrotactile stimulations confirming with contextual expectations also elicited higher brain hemodynamic responses in middle-aged and old adults, this effect was limited to virtual scenarios with extreme expectancy violations. Moreover, individual differences in plausibility-related frontal activity did not correlate with plausibility violation costs in the sensorimotor cortex, indicating less systematic frontal context-based sensory filtering in older ages. These findings have practical implications for advancing digital technologies to support aging societies.</p

Congruence-based contextual plausibility modulates cortical activity during vibrotactile perception in virtual multisensory environments

How congruence cues and congruence-based expectations may together shape perception in virtual reality (VR) still need to be unravelled. We linked the concept of plausibility used in VR research with congruence-based modulation by assessing brain responses while participants experienced vehicle riding experiences in VR scenarios. Perceptual plausibility was manipulated by sensory congruence, with multisensory stimulations confirming with common expectations of road scenes being plausible. We hypothesized that plausible scenarios would elicit greater cortical responses. The results showed that: (i) vibrotactile stimulations at expected intensities, given embedded audio-visual information, engaged greater cortical activities in frontal and sensorimotor regions; (ii) weaker plausible stimulations resulted in greater responses in the sensorimotor cortex than stronger but implausible stimulations; (iii) frontal activities under plausible scenarios negatively correlated with plausibility violation costs in the sensorimotor cortex. These results potentially indicate frontal regulation of sensory processing and extend previous evidence of contextual modulation to the tactile sense.</p

Neural correlates of home-based intervention effects on value-based sequential decision-making in healthy older adults

Older adults demonstrate difficulties in sequential decision-making, which is partly attributed to under-recruitment of prefrontal networks. It is, therefore, important to understand the mechanisms that may improve this ability. This study investigated the effectiveness of an 18-sessions, home-based cognitive intervention and the neural mechanisms that underpin individual differences in intervention effects. Participants were required to learn sequential choices in a 3-stage Markov decision-making task that would yield the most rewards. Participants were assigned to better or worse responders group based on their performance at the last intervention session (T18). Better responders improved significantly starting from the fifth intervention session while worse responders did not improve across all training sessions. At post-intervention, only better responders showed condition-dependent modulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) as measured by fNIRS, with higher DLPFC activity in the delayed condition. Despite large individual differences, our data showed that value-based sequential-decision-making and its corresponding neural mechanisms can be remediated via home-based cognitive intervention in some older adults; moreover, individual differences in recruiting prefrontal activities after the intervention are associated with variations in intervention outcomes. Intervention-related gains were also maintained at three months after post-intervention. However, future studies should investigate the potential of combining other intervention methods such as non-invasive brain stimulation with cognitive intervention for older adults who do not respond to the intervention, thus emphasizing the importance of developing individualized intervention programs for older adults.</p

Congruence-based contextual plausibility modulates cortical activity during vibrotactile perception in virtual multisensory environments

How congruence cues and congruence-based expectations may together shape perception in virtual reality (VR) still need to be unravelled. We linked the concept of plausibility used in VR research with congruence-based modulation by assessing brain responses while participants experienced vehicle riding experiences in VR scenarios. Perceptual plausibility was manipulated by sensory congruence, with multisensory stimulations confirming with common expectations of road scenes being plausible. We hypothesized that plausible scenarios would elicit greater cortical responses. The results showed that: (i) vibrotactile stimulations at expected intensities, given embedded audio-visual information, engaged greater cortical activities in frontal and sensorimotor regions; (ii) weaker plausible stimulations resulted in greater responses in the sensorimotor cortex than stronger but implausible stimulations; (iii) frontal activities under plausible scenarios negatively correlated with plausibility violation costs in the sensorimotor cortex. These results potentially indicate frontal regulation of sensory processing and extend previous evidence of contextual modulation to the tactile sense.</p

Kendall's tau(b) rank correlations between PC and performance accuracy of Stroop task in the incongruent condition.

Correlations were carried out separately for anyA9 and A10/A10 allele carriers in the entire sample. Effects of age were removed from variables prior to the analyses. The correlation was only significant in the anyA9 group. Abbreviations: K, average node-degree; PC, participation coefficient.</p

Cortical networks.

Maps with the a-priori assignment of the 200 nodes to partitions of seven networks (from Yeo et al. [50]).</p