New research from Trinity College Dublin shows that older adults can be more direct, less distracted from anxiety and less mentally rested than younger adults.
The team at Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience (TCIN) (today, Wednesday, February 10, 2021) shows that older adults appear to alleviate the negative aspects of mental decline by increasing motivation and adopt more effective strategies to slow down the mind when the focus is needed.
The study, published in the journal Psychology and Aging (American Psychological Association) is the first to judge between competing theories about age-related mental mobility in the field. It highlights the influential roles of influencing and motivating factors in managing age-related differences in unpredictable mood swings and gives reasons for less conviction. in previous mental resource accounts.
The natural mind of man tends to waver. In everyday life, our thoughts often stray from this moment. Movement of mind is broadly defined as the state of mind where our attention shifts away from our current action or environment to unrelated and self-generated mental content.
Recent research in aging numbers shows that there is a pervasive but consistent finding on the frequency of mental movement with age.
Although different theories have been proposed to explain this result, previous studies have been tempted by various methodological challenges for capturing mind-blowing events.
Thus, it is not clear what neuropsychological mechanisms underlie age-related differences in mental mobility. Moreover, a lack of research examines the mechanisms underlying the dynamics of mental mobility; in particular, a movement of mind that occurs with and without intention.
Considers the wonder of the aging of the world’s population, and of the reported benefits (eg creativity, problem solving) and costs (eg more sustained attention) worse and clinical outcomes) in terms of mood swings, it is important to study the effect of age on mind -wandering.
Maintaining our focus is an important ability that underpins much of our understanding and its decline is linked to an increased risk of falls, a feature that contributes to the loss of independence and a better quality of life. lower in older adults.
Therefore, research on different states of attention is crucial for shaping our understanding of the brain and the aging process and may help inform future interventions. which aims at promoting a healthy age.
The TCIN ‘Dockree Lab’ team, in collaboration with Professor Alan Smeaton of Dublin City University, studied whether the nature and frequency of emotions changed with age, and examined the special devices that form the basis of an involuntary and deliberate mind.
They used a multidisciplinary approach where younger healthy adults and community-residents completed a series of routine mental and neuropsychological activities and performed a computer-based sustained attention task that asked participants to count take on their normal state of mind.
Compared to previous studies, the work was well-equipped to measure mental movement because the work was non-urgent and exhibited progressively expanding targets that placed greater confidence in endogenous attentional control.
Key Findings
- Older adults showed a lower propensity for mental movement, both involuntary and deliberate than younger adults. Overall, older and younger adults reported 27% and 45% psychosis, respectively, in response to the thought probes throughout the work.
- Younger and older adults showed similar performance to tasks; however, older adults with less variability performed better overall focus.
- Despite worse performance in routine mental tests, older adults showed lower levels of anxiety and depression, fewer personal attention problems, and more activity-related motivation than their younger peers.
- The analyzes also highlight the changing characteristics of older adults who were able to reduce the unconscious mind through their lower levels of anxiety and greater stimulus of action than the younger group without mind. Despite functional resource accounts for mental mobility, the mental variables no longer contributed to this model.
- The team saw a link between a deliberate movement of mind and more false alarms on the action, which were mediated by a more inconsistent response, especially in the young people who were quieter in approach. Assuming that the higher variability of younger adults did not provide a relative cost to their performance compared to older adults, they have more resources for flexible switching between focus and more exploratory states of mind.
- On the other hand, older adults are more focused on the action, with less bias towards mental movement. We suggest that this is a changing quality of aging – when context requires it, older adults stop the moving mind to mitigate potential costs. .
The team suggests that satisfactory and strategic factors should be considered in future studies examining mental movement over the lifespan. The research, therefore, clarifies the nature and interrelationship of different dimensions of mental movement and provides us with a new perspective on how the processes of unexpected and deliberate mental movement change with age.
Age-related mental decline later in life represents the primary cause of disease burden and loss of functional independence. Despite these challenges, there is a consistent and perhaps frustrating discovery in mental decline with advanced age. Our research, supported by the Irish Research Council, provides a new perspective on the impact of the aging process on mood swings. We elucidate the adaptive strategies and positive traits that older adults have captured that have led to a beneficial reduction in mental and similar performance in younger adults. Breaking down the mechanisms underlying various mental processes can be important signs of aging. “
Catherine Moran, Principal study author and PhD candidate, School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin
Dr Paul Dockree, Associate Professor of Psychology and co-author / lead researcher, said:
“‘Old and absent’ is a phrase, commonly known, but it does not hold a universal truth. Our research suggests that older adults may be more direct. , less confusion and less peace of mind than younger adults Importantly, older adults appear to alleviate the negative aspects of mental decline by increasing motivation and adopting strategies more effective in deactivating the moving mind when the focus is needed.This research adheres to the Trinity Trinity Research Theme, which promotes a deeper understanding of mental changes as we age, with a view to establishing a more age – appropriate society. “