Exploring the specificity of age-related differences in theory of mind tasks.
Tasks assessing theory of mind (ToM) and non-mental state control tasks were administered to young and older adults to examine previous contradictory findings about age differences in mental state decoding. Age differences were found on a verbal ToM task after controlling for vocabulary levels. Older adults achieved significantly lower scores than did younger adults on static and dynamic visual ToM tasks, and a similar pattern was found on non-ToM control tasks. Rather than a specific ToM deficit, older adults exhibited a more general impairment in the ability to decode cues from verbal and visual information about people.
Slessor
Gillian
G
School of Psychology, College of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom. gillian.slessor@abdn.ac.uk
Phillips
Louise H
LH
Bull
Rebecca
R
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D003469:Culture; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D018187:Personal Construct Theory