Main content
Sources of cognitive conflict and their relevance to Theory of Mind proficiency in healthy aging. A preregistered study /
Sources of cognitive conflict and their relevance to Theory of Mind proficiency in healthy ageing. A preregistered study.
Date created: | Last Updated:
: DOI | ARK
Creating DOI. Please wait...
Category: Project
Description: The ability to represent others’ beliefs, desires and intentions, having a Theory of mind (ToM), is believed to decline in older age. Classic ToM tasks, however, typically encompass demands on executive functions (EF), which are also thought to decline in older age. Research to date has yet to tease apart the interaction between ToM and EF in healthy ageing. We assessed how older versus younger adults were affected by three core EF/ToM manipulations embedded within a novel false belief task: 1) Knowledge of reality 2) Congruence of perspectives between two agents 3) Congruence of perspectives between Self and Other. Our data show some comparability in the patterns of difficulty experienced between older and younger adults, where representing an agent whose belief differed from another agent’s, or from one’s own belief, was consistently more effortful than representing beliefs which were congruent between Self and Other. Nonetheless, when compared with younger adults, older adults were disproportionately affected by incompatibility between Self and Other perspectives. We discuss these results in line with conceptual and methodological implications for past and future investigations of ToM in healthy ageing. This study was preregistered via the Open Science Framework; details of the design and analysis plan can be found here: DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/9ZMX8