On the generality of the effect of experiencing prior gains and losses on the Iowa gambling task: A study on young and old adults

Prospect Theory predicts that people tend to be more risk seeking if their reference point is perceived as a loss and more risk averse when the reference point is perceived as a gain. In line with this prediction, Franken, Georgieva, Muris and Dijksterhuis (2006) showed that young adults who had a prior experience of monetary gains make more safe choices on subsequent decisions than subjects who had an early experience of losses. There are no experimental studies on how experiencing prior gains and losses differently influences young and older adults on a subsequent decision-making task (the Iowa Gambling Task). Hence, in the current paper, adapting the methodology employed by Franken et al.’s (2006), we intended to test the generality of their effect across the life span. Overall, we found that subjects who experienced prior monetary gains or prior monetary losses did not display significant differences in safe/risky choices on subsequent performance in the Iowa Gambling task. Furthermore, the impact of prior gains and losses on risky/safe card selection did not significantly differ between young and older adults. These results showed that the effect found in the Franken et al.’s study (2006) is limited in its generality

The impact of failures and successes on affect and self-esteem in young and older adults

Little is known about the impact of success and failure events on age-related changes in affect states and, particularly, in self-esteem levels. To fill this gap in the literature, in the present study changes in affect and self-esteem in 100 young (19 - 30 years) and 102 older adults (65-81 years) were assessed after participants experienced success and failure in a demanding cognitive task. Overall, the success-failure manipulation induced changes on affect states and on state self-esteem, not on trait self-esteem. Regarding age differences, older and young adults were affected to the same extent by experiences of successes and failures. Theoretical considerations of the empirical findings are provided in the general discussion

Objective Knowledge Mediates the Relationship between the Use of Social Media and COVID-19-Related False Memories

The exposure to relevant social and/or historical events can increase the generation of false memories (FMs). The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a calamity challenging health, political, and journalistic bodies, with media generating confusion that has facilitated the spread of fake news. In this respect, our study aims at investigating the relationships between memories (true memories, TMs vs. FMs) for COVID-19-related news and different individual variables (i.e., use of traditional and social media, COVID-19 perceived and objective knowledge, fear of the disease, depression and anxiety symptoms, reasoning skills, and coping mechanisms). One hundred and seventy-one university students (131 females) were surveyed. Overall, our results suggested that depression and anxiety symptoms, reasoning skills, and coping mechanisms did not affect the formation of FMs. Conversely, the fear of loved ones contracting the infection was found to be negatively associated with FMs. This finding might be due to an empathy/prosociality-based positive bias boosting memory abilities, also explained by the young age of participants. Furthermore, objective knowledge (i) predicted an increase in TMs and decrease in FMs and (ii) significantly mediated the relationships between the use of social media and development of both TMs and FMs. In particular, higher levels of objective knowledge strengthened the formation of TMs and decreased the development of FMs following use of social media. These results may lead to reconsidering the idea of social media as the main source of fake news. This claim is further supported by either the lack of substantial differences between the use of traditional and social media among participants reporting FMs or the positive association between use of social media and levels of objective knowledge. The knowledge about the topic rather than the type of source would make a difference in the process of memory formation

Altered patterns of cortical activation in ALS patients during attention and cognitive response inhibition tasks

Since amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) can be accompanied by executive dysfunction, it is hypothesised that ALS patients will have impaired performance on tests of cognitive inhibition. We predicted that ALS patients would show patterns of abnormal activation in extramotor regions when performing tests requiring the inhibition of prepotent responses (the Stroop effect) and the inhibition of prior negatively primed responses (the negative priming effect) when compared to healthy controls. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to measure activation during a sparse sequence block design paradigm investigating the Stroop and negative priming effects in 14 ALS patients and 8 healthy age- and IQ-matched controls. Behavioural measures of performance were collected. Both groups’ reaction times (RTs) reflected the Stroop effect during scanning. The ALS and control groups did not differ significantly for any of the behavioural measures but did show significant differences in cerebral activation during both tasks. The ALS group showed increased activation predominantly in the left middle temporal gyrus (BA 20/21), left superior temporal gyrus (BA 22) and left anterior cingulate gyrus (BA 32). Neither group’s RT data showed clear evidence of a negative priming effect. However the ALS group showed decreased activation, relative to controls, particularly in the left cingulate gyrus (BA 23/24), left precentral gyrus (BA 4/6) and left medial frontal gyrus (BA 6). Greater cerebral activation in the ALS group accompanying the performance of the Stroop effect and areas of decreased activation during the negative priming comparison suggest altered inhibitory processing in ALS, consistent with other evidence of executive dysfunction in ALS. The current findings require further exploration in a larger study

Evaluation of inhibitory processes in cognitive aging

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Evidence for Age-Related Equivalence in the Directed Forgetting Paradigm

The directed forgetting paradigm involves, under particular experimental circumstances, inhibitory mechanisms, which operate to the successful forgetting of irrelevant words. The item-by-item cueing method (e.g., Basden & Basden, 1996) was used to investigate the directed forgetting effect in young and old adults. Processing of the experimental words was manipulated between subjects by asking participants to perform either a deep or a shallow orienting task on each word of the study list before the occurrence of the cue (to remember of to forget). Results indicated that the instruction to process deeply both to-be-remembered and to-be-forgotten words led to equivalent directed forgetting effects in young and old adults. These results are discussed with respect to the implications they have for the Inhibitory Deficit theory (e.g., Hasher & Zacks, 1988), which suggests that cognitive aging is mainly characterized by a reduction in the efficiency of inhibitory processes. © 2002 Elsevier Science (USA)

The Role of Switching, Inhibition and Working Memory in Older Adults' Performance in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test

The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) is considered a typical executive test. However, several interesting questions are still open as to the specific executive processes underlying this task. In the present study, we explored how local and global switching, inhibition and working memory, assessed through the Number\u2013Letter, the Stop Signal and the Reading Span tasks, relate to older adults\u2019 performance in the WCST. Results showed that older adults\u2019 performance variability in the number of perseverative errors was predicted by the local switch component of the Number\u2013Letter task. Results also showed age-related differences in inhibition, working memory and global switching, while local switching resulted largely spared in aging. This study provides evidence that switching abilities may contribute to performance of older adults in the WCST. It also provides initial evidence suggesting that switching processes, associated with local switch costs, are involved in performance on the WCST, at least in older adults

Does episodic future thinking improve prospective remembering?

Extant findings suggest interesting avenues for the investigation of the potential relationship between EFT and PM. However, as they stand, they are inconclusive as to the causal role that EFT may play in aiding prospective remembering. In one Experiment, we showed that accuracy in a prospective memory (PM) task performed on the second day was significantly higher when participants, on the first day, had mentally simulated the sequence of events expected to occur on the second day, including the PM task, than when they had performed control tasks. These data extend previous findings on the functional benefit of future simulations in different domains by revealing a substantial facilitation effect of future-oriented thoughts on PM performance when the mentally simulated future task matched the actually executed task. © 2013 Elsevier Inc