Age Differences In Judgments Research Articles

Counterfactual thinking and age differences in judgments of regret and blame

In the current study, we examined whether two different counterfactual thinking biases (i.e., action bias and temporal order bias) influence children’s and adults’ judgments of regret and blame and whether the perspective that participants take (i.e., self vs. other) affects blame attributions. Little evidence was found for either bias in young children’s judgments, and at older ages the temporal order bias had a stronger influence on judgments compared with the action bias. In addition, the results provide new evidence suggesting that there are developmental changes in the effects of self versus other perspectives on children’s social judgments. The findings are discussed in the context of developmental change in counterfactual thinking.

Bandwidths for the perception of head orientation decrease during childhood

Adults use the orientation of people's heads as a cue to the focus of their attention. We examined developmental changes in mechanisms underlying sensitivity to head orientation during childhood. Eight-, 10-, 12-year-olds, and adults were adapted to a frontal face view or a 20° left or right side view before judging the orientation of a face at or near frontal. After frontal adaptation, there were no age differences in judgments of head orientation. However, after adaptation to a 20° left or right side view, aftereffects were larger and sensitivity to head orientation was lower in 8- and 10-year-olds than in adults, with no difference between 12-year-olds and adults. A computational model indicates that these results can be modeled as a consequence of decreasing neural tuning bandwidths and decreasing additive internal noise during childhood, and/or as a consequence of increasing inhibition during childhood. These results provide the first evidence that neural mechanisms underlying sensitivity to head orientation undergo considerable refinement during childhood.

Adult age differences in judgments of semantic fit

A total of 130 young adults and 173 older adults gave goodness of fit ratings for sets of word alternatives for 123 English sentence frames. Word alternatives were semantically plausible in all cases but varied in the likelihood of their occurrence within the sentence frames. Adding support to the general belief that vocabulary and language knowledge are well preserved in normal aging, our results showed generally high agreement in goodness of fit ratings by the young and older adults. Differences that did occur appeared to be due to cohort differences in word usage and interests rather than underlying cognitive function. We suggest that this similarity in semantic judgments may help to explain why adult age differences in comprehension and memory for sentences are generally smaller than age differences for other examples of episodic memory.

Reality compared with its alternatives: age differences in judgments of regret and relief.

Three experiments examined developmental change in children's understanding of regret and relief, two second-order emotions whose quality depends on a comparison between reality and "what might have been." In Experiment 1, participants 7 years of age and older, but not 5-year-olds, made regret-related emotion-response judgments that took into account a comparison of reality with its alternatives. In Experiment 2, 5-year-olds judged that an individual would feel better, rather than worse, when a counterfactual outcome was better than what actually occurred (the opposite of the pattern found with older children and adults). Experiment 3 focused on the understanding of relief. In contrast to the findings from Experiment I, the 7-year-olds in Experiment 3 made their judgments solely on the basis of what actually occurred.

Judgments about collision in younger and older drivers

To travel safely, drivers must detect imminent collisions. Older drivers have more accidents per miles driven than younger drivers, potentially reflecting age differences in judgments about collision. Prior studies measured age differences in judgments about when a collision would occur (time to contact). Older adults made greater underestimations, but this would lower their risk for accidents. Judgments about when a collision would occur must be preceded by judgments about whether a collision would occur (Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (2001) Minneapolis). Results of the present study indicated that judgments about potential collision were less accurate for older drivers compared with younger drivers. This would increase their risk for accidents. Age differences in driver performance may be associated more with age differences in judgments about whether a collision would occur than with age differences in judgments about when a collision would occur. Age differences in judgments about potential collision suggest a new avenue to pursue in an account of differential accident rates in older and younger drivers.

Age Differences in Perceptual Judgments about Potential Collision and Implications for Driving

To travel safely, drivers must detect and identify conditions that precipitate collisions. Previous results suggest that judgments about collision are influenced by scene parameters, task constraints, and age. Such studies typically focussed on judgments about when a collision would occur (time to contact). Results indicated that older observers underestimated time to contact more than younger observers; they thought that collisions would occur relatively sooner (Hancock & Manser, 1997; Schiff et al., 1992). However, biases toward underestimation would decrease the risk for accidents (Scialfa et al., 1987). Therefore, the age difference in judgments about time to contact does not seem to be a good candidate to account for the higher accident rate in older drivers. Alternatively, age differences in judgments about whether a collision would occur (potential collision; DeLucia, 1995) may contribute to differential accident rates. Therefore, age differences in such judgments were measured with computer simulations of three-dimensional scenes. When participants reported whether two moving objects would collide with each other, older adults (51-76 years) responded less accurately and more quickly than younger adults (18-23 years). When participants reported whether an approaching object would hit them, mean thresholds were greater for older females compared with younger females. The results indicate that the ability to detect collisions is an important factor to consider in an account of age differences in accident rates. Further research is warranted to determine whether less effective judgments about whether a collision would occur contribute more to the higher rate of traffic accidents and convictions in older drivers than to (mis)estimates of when a collision would occur.

Children's Moral Reasoning about Self and Others

In two studies, we examined children's reasoning about prosocial moral dilemmas in which the cost of helping and/or the identity of the story protagonist (self versus a third-person other) were varied. In Experiment 1, preschool children who responded to stories in which they themselves were characters verbalized more hedonistic reasoning, used less reasoning in which they were oriented toward the other's needs, and were less likely to say that they should help the needy other than were children who reasoned about third-person others. In Experiment 2, identity of the protagonist, cost of helping for the protagonist (a low cost condition was added), and age of the subject (preschool versus first grade) were varied. For children in the high cost condition (but not the low cost condition), the pattern of results was similar to that in Experiment 1. Age differences in judgments were somewhat greater when the cost of helping was low.

Age differences in judgments of recency for short sequences of pictures.

Age differences in judgments of recency for short sequences of pictures.