Thursday 8th of May 15.00-16.30
Aula Scarpa
Chair of the session – Fulvia Castelli
| 15.00 – 15.20 | Edmund Wascher | Beyond linear decline: Age-related trajectories of cognitive functions based on EEG data from the Dortmund Vital Study. |
| 15.20 – 15.40 | Febe Demeyer | The impact of cognitive load on insight and analytical problem solving in older adults. |
| 15.40 – 16.00 | Geraldine Rodriguez-Nieto | Age-related differences in cognitive flexibility as a process and as a trait and their intersection at the brain. |
| 16.00 – 16.20 | Sophie Meissner | Gaze behaviour during walking in the real world with and without a search task in younger and older adults. |
Abstracts
Beyond linear decline: Age-related trajectories of cognitive functions based on EEG data from the Dortmund Vital Study.
by Edmund Wascher | Stefan Arnau | Patrick D. Gajewski | Stephan Getzmann
Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factor (IfADo), Dortmund, Germany
Traditional aging research often assumes a linear decline in cognitive functions, typically comparing young and older adults while omitting middle-aged populations. The Dortmund Vital Study challenges this simplified perspective through comprehensive neurocognitive assessment of over 600 participants aged 20-70 years. Here, we analyzed ten distinct neurocognitive experiments with multichannel EEG recordings. Using cubic modeling to analyze age-related progression, we identified variables where age accounted for >10% of variance. K-means cluster analysis revealed four distinct developmental patterns. Spectral parameters, particularly in theta and alpha frequency bands, demonstrated pronounced decline during early adulthood before stabilizing around age 40. While some measures, such as response times and specific ERP latencies, showed linear age-related decline, others exhibited unexpected patterns. Notably, performance in cognitive conflict tasks and visual search improved until approximately age 40, followed by accelerated decline. These findings highlight the heterogeneous nature of cognitive aging, suggesting that different cognitive functions follow distinct developmental trajectories. The results emphasize the importance of including middle-aged adults in cognitive aging research and challenge the traditional binary young-versus-old comparison approach. Our study provides crucial insights into the complex, non-linear patterns of cognitive development across adulthood, potentially reflecting diverse underlying physiological mechanisms.
The impact of cognitive load on insight and analytical problem solving in older adults.
by Febe Demeyer | Hans Stuyck | Céline R. Gillebert | Eva Van den Bussche
KU Leuven
The increased life expectancy has made maintaining strong cognitive functions in later life more important than ever. However, most cognitive functions, including analytical problem solving, decline with age. Analytical problem solving typically involves a series of gradual and explicit steps that hone in on the solution and relies heavily on executive functions. In contrast, insight problem solving, characterized by a sudden realization of the solution into consciousness (i.e., the “Aha!” moment), relies more on implicit, automatic processes and appears less dependent on executive function resources. Evidence even suggests that decreased executive functions improves insight, thus potentially preserving or enhancing insight with age. We compared behavioral performance between older adults and intelligence-matched young adults during insight and analytical problem solving using the Compound Remote Associates task. We included three conditions with varying cognitive load to study the impact of taxing executive functioning on problem-solving performance. As expected, older adults were less accurate than young adults at analytical problem solving when no additional cognitive load impeded problem solving, and they generally used this analytical strategy less frequently than young adults. However, crucially, this age-related decline was not found for insight, suggesting that insight may be preserved as people age.
Age-related differences in cognitive flexibility as a process and as a trait and their intersection at the brain.
by Geraldine Rodríguez-Nieto | Stephan Swinnen
KU Leuven
Cognitive flexibility facilitates the adaptation to new environments, resulting crucial in a rapidly changing and aging society. In this study, we aimed to study age-related changes in cognitive flexibility measured through a computer task and through self-reports (‘Dependence on Routines’ and ‘Dogmatism’). In addition, we investigated whether cognitive flexibility as a trait modulated the brain activity during cognitive flexibility performance through fMRI. 40 young and 40 old adults participated in this study. The results showed differences in the initial performance of cognitive flexibility but these differences dissipated with learning. Furthermore, there were no significant differences in the flexibility selfreports between groups but there were important brain activity differences during cognitive flexibility performance. Remarkably, the Dependence on Routines trait modulated the BOLD activity in frontal regions in the young individuals and in subcortical regions in the older adults. In conclusion, cognitive flexibility as a cognitive process can be sufficiently distinguished of cognitive flexibility as a trait, and aging plays a distinct role in these components. Finally, cognitive flexibility as a trait seems to have a distinct influence during cognitive flexibility performance in both age groups. The consideration of different components of cognitive flexibility can facilitate intervention programs in older individuals.
Gaze behaviour during walking in the real world with and without a search task in younger and older adults.
by Sophie Meissner1 | Sabine Grimm2 | Wolfgang Einhäuser2 | Jutta Billino1
1 Justus Liebig University Giessen
2 Chemnitz University of Technology
Avoiding falls is a critical concern, especially for older adults, and an effective distribution of gaze plays an important role in it. In this study, we investigate whether gaze behavior during walking differs between younger and older adults and whether an explicit search task affects gaze distribution in the two groups differently. We instructed younger (N=24, M=26.1 years) and older (N=24, M=68.8 years) adults to walk through a hallway, either with or without the additional task to locate small target objects on the walls. Gaze behavior was recorded with mobile eye-tracking glasses. Additionally, we assessed executive function capability to examine its relationship with effective gaze distribution. A key finding is that older adults oriented their gaze more towards the ground than younger adults; however, this difference was significantly attenuated when they were prompted to search for target objects. The age-related differences in ground dwell time during walking suggest a stronger prioritization of gait-related information in older adults – likely as a compensation strategy for age-related changes in gait stability. During the search task, older adults adapt their gaze behavior, potentially deprioritizing stable gait in such situations.