Abstract
The current body of research often focuses on the problem of cognitive decline through ageing. People adapt to these changes of cognitive resources by using brain reserve. An overview of results of different studies on how cognitive abilities of older adults decline highlights high variability of conclusions and sometimes contradiction but it has been shown older adults can be as good as or even better than younger participants in specific domains. Among others, personal meaningfulness of a situation and closeness to the researcher can be strong factors when assessing cognitive abilities and the aim of this paper was to research how these effect cognitive efficiency. In the pilot study we eliminated the factor of laboratory setting and checked how cognitive efficiency and abilities change in relation to motivation. Forty-eight participants, divided into two age groups, were asked to pass a proverb interpretation test. The results showed that participant's subjective view on the researcher, perceived closeness, correlated with the adequacy in proverb interpretation. Both groups scored higher on adequacy of interpretation when they perceived to be close to the researcher. The younger adults outperformed the older but those in the older adults' group, who felt to be close to the researcher scored as well as younger adults who didn't perceived to be close to the researcher. This motivational reserve might play a role in assessing cognitive abilities and pathologies that affect the outcome of neuropsychological tests.
Highlights
Cognitive decline often accompanies normal ageing, not all cognitive functions seem to decline at the same rate nor simultaneously [1]
All subjects in the group younger adults (YA) filled in the number sequence correctly, and the mean adequacy score for the older adults (OA) group was 0,79
The analysis found that group OA had statistically significantly lower level of success in completing the number sequence (t(23) = 2,46, p = 0.022)
Summary
Cognitive decline often accompanies normal ageing, not all cognitive functions seem to decline at the same rate nor simultaneously [1]. Crystalline intelligence (verbal knowledge, comprehension, autobiographical memories, emotional processes, strategies of processing, learned skills, occupational skills) can stay stable with age but may even improve Since this knowledge is able to compensate for decline in the cognitive pragmatics, cognitive decline has little impact on everyday life. In first study of TOM in normal ageing [3] they suggested that despite decrease in performance on tasks with nonmental content the performance in TOM tasks (understanding double bluffs, mistakes, persuasions, and white lies) remains intact or may even improve with coming of age In their experiment elderly group outperformed the younger on TOM stories task. Contradicting results might be explained by various factors, one of such being unclear differentiation of the subcomponents of TOM, differences in memory load that TOM tasks require, or different definitions of “old-age” [5]
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