Modulating prospective memory and attentional control with high-definition transcranial current stimulation: Study protocol of a randomized, double-blind, and sham-controlled trial in healthy older adults.

The ability to remember future intentions (i.e., prospective memory) is influenced by attentional control. At the neuronal level, frontal and parietal brain regions have been related to attentional control and prospective memory. It is debated, however, whether more or less activity in these regions is beneficial for older adults' performance. We will test that by systematically enhancing or inhibiting activity in these regions with anodal or cathodal high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation in older adults. We will include n = 105 healthy older volunteers (60-75 years of age) in a randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled, and parallel-group design. The participants will receive either cathodal, anodal, or sham high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation of the left or right inferior frontal gyrus, or the right superior parietal gyrus (1mA for 20 min). During and after stimulation, the participants will complete tasks of attentional control and prospective memory. The results of this study will clarify how frontal and parietal brain regions contribute to attentional control and prospective memory in older healthy adults. In addition, we will elucidate the relationship between attentional control and prospective memory in that age group. The study has been registered with ClinicalTrials.gov on the 12th of May 2021 (trial identifier: NCT04882527)

Frequency and Strategicness of Clock-Checking Explain Detrimental Age-Effects in Time-Based Prospective Memory

This project was funded from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) under Grant 100019_165572 and under the Swiss National Center of Competences in Research LIVES – Overcoming vulnerability: life course perspectives (grant number: 51NF40-160590

Intraindividual variability in inhibition and prospective memory in healthy older adults: insights from response regularity and rapidity

Successful prospective memory (PM) performance relies on executive functions, including inhibition. However, PM and inhibition are usually assessed in separate tasks, and analytically the focus is either on group differences or at most on interindividual differences. Conjoint measures of PM and inhibition performance that take into account intraindividual variability (IIV) are thus missing. In the present study, we assessed healthy older adults’ level of performance and IIV in both inhibition and PM using a classical Go/NoGo task. We also created a prospective Go/NoGo version that embeds a PM component into the task. Using dynamic structural equation modeling, we assessed the joint effects of mean level (m), an indicator of amplitude of fluctuations in IIV (or net IIV; intraindividual standard deviation, iSD), and an indicator of time dependency in IIV (the autoregressive parameter f) in reaction times (RTs) on inhibition and PM performance. Results indicate that higher inhibition failure, but not IIV, predicted PM errors, corroborating the current literature on the involvement of prepotent response inhibition in PM processes. In turn, fastest RT latency (m) and increased net IIV (iSD) were consistently associated with prepotent response inhibition failure, while coherence in RT pattern (f) was beneficial to inhibition performance when the task was novel. Time-dependent IIV (f) appears to reflect an adaptive exploration of strategies to attain optimal performance, whereas increased net IIV (iSD) may indicate inefficient sustained cognitive processes when performance is high. We discuss trade-off processes between competing tasks

A mixed-method study on strategies in everyday personal goals among community-dwelling older adults

Introduction: Although it is well known that preference for selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) strategies is associated with indicators of successful aging and well-being, very little is known about what predicts the use of SOC as goal management strategies in the daily lives of older adults. The present study investigates predictors of self-reported use of SOC strategies in community-dwelling adults. We expected selection and especially compensation to be higher in individuals with worse subjective health and cognitive performance. On the contrary, given that optimization is an anticipatory strategy to increase goal-relevant means in the absence of resource losses, we did not expect optimization to be related to either health or cognition. Methods: We performed hierarchical regression to predict use of SOC strategies to achieve everyday personal goals (assessed qualitatively via semi-structured interviews exploring participants' personal goals) from subjective health and objective cognitive performance, controlling for age, apathy, and depression. Results: Poorer self-rated health and worse cognitive performance positively predicted compensation as a goal management strategy (R2 = 20%), whereas self-rated health just failed to significantly predict selection rates. None of the variables of interest predicted optimization. Discussion/Conclusion: Whereas previous research suggests associations between reduced resources and decreased absolute frequency of compensation use, the present study found that poorer cognitive status and perceived health are both linked to increased reliance on compensation in order to preserve well-being. In line with their anticipatory nature, the use of optimization strategies was independent from health and cognitive resources in our sample. We discuss the absence of conclusive effects regarding selection in this study in light of the distinction between elective and loss-based selection

Equivalence de mesure

Pour pouvoir comparer les performances ou traits psychologiques d’individus issus de différentes populations dans un contexte d’évaluation multilingue et multiculturelle, il est primordial de s’assurer que les construits psychologiques d’intérêt soient mesurés de la même façon dans ces populations. Ce chapitre, destiné aux lecteurs ayant des connaissances de base relatives aux modèles d’équations structurales, introduit les notions d’impartialité et d’équité des outils d’évaluation psychologiques et fournit un tutoriel pas à pas dans l’environnement et logiciel R (avec les packages lavaan, semTools et semPlot) pour tester l’équivalence de mesure à la lumière de ces deux concepts. Les auteurs explicitent les notions d’invariances factorielles configurales faible, forte et stricte, et discutent leurs implications en termes de comparabilité des résultats entre les groupes. Un exemple issu de la psychologie sociale est développé dans ce chapitre

Goals do not buy well-being, but they help

Although personal goals give meaning in life and contribute to well-being, achieving goals can become difficult in older adults who face age-related challenges. Forty-nine older adults aged 65 to 92 years completed a semi-structured interview on personal goals, obstacles to goal achievement, and contributors to well-being. Using a thematic analysis, we identified several types of goals contributing to well-being, and general aspects of well-being. Results revealed that, although older people might say that they do not have big goals in their lives anymore, they end up mentioning many activities that theoretically are goals. Many of these activities are geared towards maintaining or increasing their general well-being. Of importance, they report few complaints regarding goal achievement, which they explained by reducing the number and breadth of their goals, adjusting and reevaluating these goals, and overcoming difficulties and stabilizing current functioning, thereby maintaining a sense of continuity and satisfying levels of well-being. This study illustrates the interactions between resources and stressors from older adults' own viewpoint. Taken together, results advocate for the usefulness of the functional quality of life model and proactive approaches to successful aging, and provide directions for individualized interventions in the elderly

Are facet-specific task trainings efficient in improving children’s executive functions and why (they might not be)?: a multi-facet latent change score approach

It currently remains unclear how facet-specific trainings of three core modules of executive function (EF; updating, switching, and inhibition) directly compare regarding efficacy, whether improvements on trained tasks transfer to nontrained EF tasks, and which factors predict children’s improvements. The current study systematically investigated three separate EF trainings in 6- to 11-year-old children (N = 229) using EF-specific trainings that were similar in structure, design, and intensity. Children participated in pre- and posttest assessments of the three EFs and were randomly allocated to one of three EF trainings or to an active or passive control group. Multivariate latent change score models revealed that only the updating group showed training-specific improvements in task performance that were larger compared with active controls as well as passive controls. In contrast, there were no training-specific benefits of training switching or inhibition. Latent changes in the three EF tasks were largely independent, and there was no evidence of transfer effects to nontrained EF tasks. Lower baseline performance and older age predicted larger changes in EF performance. These seemingly opposing effects support compensation accounts as well as developmental theories of EF, and they highlight the importance of simultaneously accounting for multiple predictors within one model. In line with recent theoretical proposals of EF development, we provide new systematic evidence that questions whether modular task trainings represent an efficient approach to improve performance in narrow or in broader indicators of EF. Thereby, this evidence ultimately highlights the need for more comprehensive assessments of EF and, subsequently, the development of new training approaches

Frequency and strategicness of clock-checking explain detrimental age effects in time-based prospective memory

Previous studies report that monitoring the passing of time by checking a clock either frequently or strategically (immediately before a target-time) improves the likelihood of remembering to perform a planned intention at a specific time (i.e., time-based prospective memory, TBPM). Critically, strategicness of clock-checking is usually measured as the number of clock-checks during the last time interval before the target-time-an operationalization where strategicness actually intertwines with absolute frequency of clock-checking and may not properly account for age-effects in TBPM performance. To disentangle the respective contribution of frequent vs. strategic clock-checking to the age-related decrease in TBPM performance, we propose a new, more fine-grained indicator of strategicness (i.e., relative clock-checking), which accounts for interindividual differences in the total frequency of clock-checking (i.e., absolute clock-checking). In this study, 223 participants from an adult lifespan sample (age-range = 19-86, M = 45.61, SD =17.24; 70% women) had to remember to push the ENTER key every 60 seconds while performing a 2-back picture decision task. Together, relative and absolute clock-checking fully mediated the negative age-effect on TBPM and explained 53.6% of the variance of TBPM performance. Complementary analyses revealed that both indicators were needed to fully mediate the effect of age on TBPM, but that strategic (i.e., relative) clock-checking was a stronger predictor of TBPM performance than absolute clock-checking. These results stress the importance of considering both aspects of clock-checking to investigate time monitoring in laboratory TBPM tasks and age effects therein, and provide avenues of intervention for improving older adults’ TBPM