Unit:
Speciality Clinical NeuropsychologyLibrary of the School of Health Sciences
Author:
Stavrogianni Konstantina
Supervisors info:
Κωνσταντίνος Πόταγας, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Νικόλαος Σμυρνής, Καθηγητής, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Σωκράτης Παπαγεωργίου, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Original Title:
Theory of mind and executive functions in normal aging: independent or related deficits?
Translated title:
Theory of mind and executive functions in normal aging: independent or related deficits?
Summary:
Objective: Higher-order cognitive and affective Theory of Mind (ToM) and simple emotion identification constitute essential prerequisites of social cognition. Recently, literature has begun to be interested in the trajectory of ToM in late adulthood, providing contradictory results as regards age effects in mentalizing and mechanisms that may account for these changes. The present study attempted to address how specific ToM aspects change in normal aging, their intercorrelations and the unique role of executive functions in these relationships.
Method: Fifty healthy old adults were compared against a younger control group on a neuropsychological battery consisted of measures of core executive functions (working memory, inhibition control, and mental flexibility), faux pas test for affective and cognitive ToM and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (RMET) for emotional identification. Regression and mediation analyses were conducted to identify the best predictors of every ToM subcomponent and to examine the real effect of age upon mentalizing.
Results: Data yielded robust age differences in all executive tasks, as well as in faux pas stories and RMET scores. The only significant predictor for cognitive ToM was age, whereas neither executive subdomains nor the emotional detection accounted for its variation. Similarly, age explained an important variation of RMET performance among participants, while a trend occurred for inhibition to become a significant regressor too. Age in cooperation with cognitive flexibility and emotional perception capacity were the strongest predictors for affective ToM, but working memory and inhibition remained nonsignificant predictors. Mediation analysis indicated that only emotional identification attenuated the effect of age on affective mentalizing, although age continued to be significantly correlated with emotional faux pas scores.
Discussion: Rather that a selective decline of ToM, older individuals show generalized difficulties on lower and higher order ToM tasks. Decline in cognitive ToM seem to occur independent of executive deterioration. Reduction of emotion perception appears as a sequalae of late adulthood changes, but the likelihood of some executive dysfunction to exacerbate the difficulties should be considered. Diminished affective ToM may happen either directly due to older age or as an indirect outcome of age through the underlying deteriorations on basic emotional skills. Findings highlight the need for further studies regarding ToM in normal aging within a multidimensional context
Main subject category:
Health Sciences
Keywords:
Theory of Mind; normal aging; affective; cognitive; emotion identification; executive functions
