Reward motivation more consistently modulates memory for younger compared to older adults in a directed forgetting task.

Remembering and forgetting are both important processes of a healthy memory system, but both processes can show age-related decline. Reward anticipation is effective at improving remembering in both younger and older adults, but little is known about the effects of incentives on forgetting. In four online experiments, we examined whether reward motivation modulates intentional remembering and forgetting in younger and older adults, and systematically varied the presentation of reward cues during encoding to test whether the temporal dynamics of reward anticipation are important for directed forgetting performance. Both age groups showed directed forgetting effects such that participants remembered more items they were instructed to remember than instructed to forget, but across experiments, we found no evidence that reward incentives improved forgetting in either age group. Younger adults consistently exhibited reward-modulated memory across experiments and varying the timing of the reward cue had little impact on performance. Older adults displayed inconsistent effects of reward on memory, only when reward anticipation was elicited closer to the middle of the experimental trial did it enhance memory in this task. Overall, the findings from the current set of experiments indicate that reward anticipation improved memory, but not forgetting, and most consistently for younger adults, compared to older adults. Further, older adults' cognitive performance may be more sensitive to the placement and timing of reward anticipation in the experimental trial perhaps due to the time course of reward anticipation and interactions with the hippocampus that may show age-related change. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Behavioral and fMRI evidence that arousal enhances bottom-up selectivity in young but not older adults.

The locus coeruleus-noradrenergic system integrates signals about arousal states throughout the brain and helps coordinate cognitive selectivity. However, age-related changes in this system may impact how arousal coordinates selectivity in older adults. To examine this, we compared how increases in emotional arousal modulates cognitive selectivity for images differing in perceptual salience in young and older adults. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found that relative to older adults, hearing an arousing sound enhanced young adults' bottom-up processing and incidental memory for high versus low salience category-selective body images. We also examined how arousing sounds impacted a top-down goal to detect dot-probes that appeared immediately after high or low salience images. We found that young adults were slower to detect probes appearing after high salience body images on arousing trials, whereas older adults showed this pattern on non-arousing trials. Taken together, our findings show that arousal's effect on selectivity changes with age and differs across bottom-up and top-down processing.

An integration engineering framework for machine learning in healthcare.

Background and Objectives: Machine Learning offers opportunities to improve patient outcomes, team performance, and reduce healthcare costs. Yet only a small fraction of all Machine Learning models for health care have been successfully integrated into the clinical space. There are no current guidelines for clinical model integration, leading to waste, unnecessary costs, patient harm, and decreases in efficiency when improperly implemented. Systems engineering is widely used in industry to achieve an integrated system of systems through an interprofessional collaborative approach to system design, development, and integration. We propose a framework based on systems engineering to guide the development and integration of Machine Learning models in healthcare. Methods: Applied systems engineering, software engineering and health care Machine Learning software development practices were reviewed and critically appraised to establish an understanding of limitations and challenges within these domains. Principles of systems engineering were used to develop solutions to address the identified problems. The framework was then harmonized with the Machine Learning software development process to create a systems engineering-based Machine Learning software development approach in the healthcare domain. Results: We present an integration framework for healthcare Artificial Intelligence that considers the entirety of this system of systems. Our proposed framework utilizes a combined software and integration engineering approach and consists of four phases: (1) Inception, (2) Preparation, (3) Development, and (4) Integration. During each phase, we present specific elements for consideration in each of the three domains of integration: The Human, The Technical System, and The Environment. There are also elements that are considered in the interactions between these domains. Conclusion: Clinical models are technical systems that need to be integrated into the existing system of systems in health care. A systems engineering approach to integration ensures appropriate elements are considered at each stage of model design to facilitate model integration. Our proposed framework is based on principles of systems engineering and can serve as a guide for model development, increasing the likelihood of successful Machine Learning translation and integration.

Retracted: The Effect of Bilingualism on Older Adults' Inhibitory Control: A Meta-Analysis.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The effect bilingualism has on older adults' inhibitory control has been extensively investigated, yet there is continued controversy regarding whether older adult bilinguals show superior inhibitory control compared with monolinguals. The objective of the current meta-analysis was to examine the reliability and magnitude of the bilingualism effect on older adults' inhibitory control as measured by the Simon and Stroop tasks. In addition, we examined whether individual characteristics moderate the bilingual advantage in inhibition, including age (young-old vs old-old), age of second language acquisition, immigrant status, language proficiency, and frequency of language use. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: A total of 22 samples for the Simon task and 14 samples for the Stroop task were derived from 28 published and unpublished articles (32 independent samples, with 4 of these samples using more than 1 task) and were analyzed in 2 separate meta-analyses. RESULTS: Analyses revealed a reliable effect of bilingualism on older adults' performance on the Simon (g = 0.60) and Stroop (g = 0.27) tasks. Interestingly, individual characteristics did not moderate the association between bilingualism and older adults' inhibitory control. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: The results suggest there is a bilingual advantage in inhibitory control for older bilinguals compared with older monolinguals, regardless of the individual characteristics previously thought to moderate this effect. Based on these findings, bilingualism may protect inhibitory control from normal cognitive decline with age.

Cognitive and Psychosocial Outcomes of Self-Guided Executive Function Training and Low-Intensity Aerobic Exercise in Healthy Older Adults.

OBJECTIVES: Prior work has demonstrated that executive function training or physical exercise can improve older adults' cognition. The current study takes an exploratory approach to compare the feasibility and efficacy of online executive function training and low-intensity aerobic exercise for improving cognitive and psychosocial functioning in healthy older adults. METHOD: Following a standard pretest-training-posttest protocol, 40 older adults (aged 65 and above) were randomly assigned to an executive function or a physical training group. A battery of cognitive and psychosocial outcome measures were administered before and after training. During the 10 weeks of self-guided training at home (25-30 min/day, 4 days/week), the executive function training group practiced a set of adaptive online executive function tasks designed by Lumos Labs, whereas the physical training group completed an adaptive Digital Video Disc (DVD)-based low-intensity aerobic exercise program. RESULTS: Training transfer effects were limited. Relative to low-intensity aerobic exercise, executive function training yielded cognitive improvement on the 64-card Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST-64), a general executive function measure. Depression and stress levels dropped following both training programs, but this could be driven by decreased stress or excitement in performing the tasks over time. DISCUSSION: The results revealed limited cognitive benefits of the online executive function training program, specifically to a near transfer test of general executive control. Importantly, the current study supports the feasibility of home-based self-guided executive function and low-intensity physical training with healthy older adults.

Influence of Reward Motivation on Directed Forgetting in Younger and Older Adults.

An important feature of the memory system is the ability to forget, but aging is associated with declines in the ability to intentionally forget potentially due to declines in cognitive control. Despite cognitive deficits, older adults are sensitive to affective manipulations, such as reward motivation, and reward anticipation can improve older adults' memory performance. The goal of the current studies was to examine the effect of reward motivation on directed remembering and forgetting. Participants were healthy CloudResearch/Turk Prime workers aged 18-35 and 60-85. In Experiment 1, we conducted a typical item-method directed forgetting task using neutral words presented one at a time followed by a to-be-remembered (TBR) or to-be-forgotten (TBF) cue. A recognition memory test followed that included all words from the encoding task, as well as new words. We replicated prior findings of better memory for TBR compared to TBF items, but not typical age-related differences in recognition of TBF items. In Experiments 2-4, we repeated this paradigm except that in the second block of trials, each word was presented with a high ($0.75) or low ($0.01) reward cue indicating the value that could be earned if the item was successfully Remembered or Forgotten (depending on cue). During recognition, correct responses to target items (both TBR and TBF) resulted in the associated reward, but incorrect "old" responses resulted in a loss of $0.50. In three experiments, high rewards led to better memory for younger and older adults compared to low rewards, regardless of the directed cue to remember or forget the word. In Experiments 3 and 4, older adults showed typical deficits in directed forgetting, but this was across reward conditions. For older adults, there was no evidence that including reward motivation improved cognitive control abilities as high value reward anticipation did not improve directed forgetting. Instead, in line with hypotheses, high compared to low value reward anticipation leads to engagement of processes that result in better memory regardless of the TBR or TBF cue, and reward anticipation bolsters memory in a relatively automatic, rather than strategic, fashion that overrides one's ability to cognitively control encoding processes.

Age differences in vulnerability to distraction under arousal.

Aging affects brain circuitry involved in both inhibition and arousal. In this study, we tested whether older adults are more or less prone to distraction from emotionally arousing events than young adults. To do so, we examined how arousing taboo distractor words affected concurrent 1-back task performance and subsequent memory for distractors. Our second goal was to examine how the arousal level of 1 item can modulate processing of preceding neutral distractors (taboo-minus-1 distractors). During the task, participants first made 1-back judgments about target pictures that were superimposed with to-be-ignored neutral or taboo distractors. Relative to young adults, older adults were more distracted by taboo than neutral words on the 1-back task and remembered more of the taboo distractors on a later incidental recognition task. Furthermore, young adults showed better suppression of taboo-minus-1 distractors than neutral distractors, whereas in older adults, arousal did not facilitate suppression of taboo-minus-1 distractors. This effect appeared to require attentional control as adding an unrelated attentional load during the 1-back task eliminated the beneficial effect of arousal for young adults' suppression of taboo-minus-1 distractors. Finally, when top-down attentional guidance was provided by increasing the goal relevance of target pictures, both groups showed enhanced suppression of taboo-minus-1 distractors versus other neutral distractors. Together, these findings imply that the effect of arousal on distractibility in aging may arise from an interaction between top-down and bottom-up processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The effect of emotional distraction on hyper-binding in young and older adults.

Our cognitive system implicitly binds relevant stimulus features into a coherent episodic event. According to past research, relative to young adults, older adults are more likely to hyper-bind extraneous co-occurrences and tend to prioritise positive over negative information. However, the interaction of these cognitive and emotional processes is unknown. The current study thus examined the influence of emotion on age-related hyper-binding. Participants completed a 1-back task for neutral target pictures paired with positive, negative, or neutral distractor words. After a delay, participants completed a paired-associate learning task for pairs that were either preserved or disrupted from the 1-back task, followed by a cued-recall test for those pairs. Compared to young adults, older adults showed better recall of preserved neutral pairs relative to disrupted neutral pairs, replicating the age-related hyper-binding effect. Interestingly, whereas older adults did not hyper-bind emotional pairs, young adults showed hyper-binding of negative pairs, but not positive or neutral. This implies that young adults may also implicitly bind irrelevant co-occurrences when they include negative information. Consistent with a negativity bias in youth, negative words may have captured young adults' attention, facilitating binding of pairs. These findings highlight the need to consider emotional effects on age differences in cognitive processing.

Age differences in cue utilization during prospective and retrospective memory monitoring.

Memory monitoring is an inferential process that we use to evaluate and make judgments about the contents of our memory. Prior work has shown age-related similarity in prospective monitoring of ongoing memory processes, but age-related deficits when retrospectively monitoring the source of memories. In the current study, we examined how extrinsic and intrinsic cues influence age differences in these 2 forms of memory monitoring. Two experiments were conducted in which young and older adults made prospective judgments of learning (JOLs) to monitor ongoing memory processes as well as retrospective source judgments during retrieval. The emotional valence of words (positive, negative, and neutral) served as an intrinsic cue across experiments. Extrinsic importance cues were manipulated via item-based directed forgetting cues (to-be-remembered versus to-be-forgotten cues) in Experiment 1 and value-based cues (+10 versus -10 cues) in Experiment 2. Results provide novel evidence for age-related similarity in use of extrinsic and intrinsic cues during prospective memory monitoring via JOLs. By contrast, during retrospective source monitoring, older but not young adults showed a bias to attribute positive items to extrinsic cues with higher importance, even when those attributions were inaccurate. These findings suggest that the age-related tendency to favor positive information may lead to systematic errors in retrospective monitoring, which has implications for the credibility of older adults' source judgments when monitoring memory for emotional events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Age differences in the neural correlates underlying control of emotional memory: An event-related potential study.

The ability to selectively remember important information and forget irrelevant details is fundamental to successful memory. Research has shown that both younger and older adults can intentionally remember and forget information varying in emotional valence; however, whether the neural correlates of these processes change with age is unknown. In this event-related potential (ERP) study, we sought to fill this knowledge gap using the item-directed forgetting (DF) task. Younger and older adults encoded positive, negative, or neutral words that were cued as either to-be-remembered (TBR) or to-be-forgotten (TBF), while brain activity was recorded with electroencephalography (EEG). Behaviorally, both age groups showed DF effects, although the magnitude of DF was reduced in older adults. Moreover, DF was not influenced by the emotional valence of words in either age group. In the brain, age differences emerged across both word- and cue-related ERPs. Whereas the late positive potential (LPP) was greater for negative than positive words in younger adults, older adults showed a reduced LPP for negative versus positive items. In response to memory cues, younger adults' ERPs showed enhanced parietal and frontal positivity following TBR and TBF cues, respectively. In contrast, older adults displayed greater frontal activity while encoding TBR items than younger adults but age invariance in parietal ERPs following TBR cues. Together, these findings suggest that both younger and older adults are able to intentionally forget information that varies in emotional valence but that the neural mechanisms underlying these processes may change with age.

Stereotype Threat Effects on Older Adults' Episodic and Working Memory: A Meta-Analysis.

Background and Objectives: Prior research has shown that exposure to negative age-based stereotype threat (ST) can undermine older adults' memory performance. The objective of the current meta-analysis was to examine the reliability and magnitude of ST effects on older adults' episodic and working memory performance-two forms of memory that typically show the greatest age-related declines. In addition, we examined potential moderators of age-based ST including type of ST manipulation, type and timing of memory task, participant age and education level. Research Design and Method: A total of 23 samples for episodic memory and 15 samples for working memory were derived from 19 published and 4 unpublished articles and analyzed in two separate meta-analyses. Results: Analyses revealed a reliable effect of ST on both older adults' episodic (d = 0.373) and working memory performance (d = 0.253). Interestingly, the age-based ST effect was only significant when blatant ST manipulations were used with episodic memory tasks or when subtle ST manipulations were used with working memory tasks. Moreover, within episodic memory, the ST effect only reached significance for recall but not cued-recall or recognition performance, and for immediate but not delayed tests of memory. Neither age nor level of education moderated the association between ST and older adults' memory performance. Discussion and Implications: These results highlight the vulnerability of both older adults' episodic and working memory performance to age-based ST. When measuring older adults' memory performance in a research context, we must therefore be wary of exposing participants to common stereotypes about aging and memory.

The Role of Cognition, Personality, and Trust in Fraud Victimization in Older Adults.

Older adults are more at risk to become a victim of consumer fraud than any other type of crime (Carcach et al., 2001) but the research on the psychological profiles of senior fraud victims is lacking. To bridge this significant gap, we surveyed 151 (120 female, 111 Caucasian) community-dwelling older adults in Southern Ontario between 60 and 90 years of age about their experiences with fraud. Participants had not been diagnosed with cognitive impairment or a neurological disorder by their doctor and looked after their own finances. We assessed their self-reported cognitive abilities using the MASQ, personality on the 60-item HEXACO Personality Inventory, and trust tendencies using a scale from the World Values Survey. There were no demographic differences between victims and non-victims. We found that victims exhibit lower levels of cognitive ability, lower honesty-humility, and lower conscientiousness than non-victims. Victims and non-victims did not differ in reported levels of interpersonal trust. Subsequent regression analyses showed that cognition is an important component in victimization over and above other social factors. The present findings suggest that fraud prevention programs should focus on improving adults' overall cognitive functioning. Further investigation is needed to understand how age-related cognitive changes affect vulnerability to fraud and which cognitive processes are most important for preventing fraud victimization.

Local context effects during emotional item directed forgetting in younger and older adults.

This paper explored the differential sensitivity young and older adults exhibit to the local context of items entering memory. We examined trial-to-trial performance during an item directed forgetting task for positive, negative, and neutral (or baseline) words each cued as either to-be-remembered (TBR) or to-be-forgotten (TBF). This allowed us to focus on how variations in emotional valence (independent of arousal) and instruction (TBR vs. TBF) of the previous item (trial n-1) impacted memory for the current item (trial n) during encoding. Different from research showing impairing effects of emotional arousal, both age groups showed a memorial boost for stimuli when preceded by items high in positive or negative valence relative to those preceded by neutral items. This advantage was particularly prominent for neutral trial n items that followed emotional items suggesting that, regardless of age, neutral memories may be strengthened by a local context that is high in valence. A trending age difference also emerged with older adults showing greater sensitivity when encoding instructions changed between trial n-1 and n. Results are discussed in light of age-related theories of cognitive and emotional processing, highlighting the need to consider the dynamic, moment-to-moment fluctuations of these systems.

Neural modulation of directed forgetting by valence and arousal: An event-related potential study.

Intentional forgetting benefits memory by removing no longer needed information and promoting processing of more relevant materials. This study sought to understand how the behavioural and neurophysiological representation of intentional forgetting would be impacted by emotion. We took a novel approach by examining the unique contribution of both valence and arousal on emotional directed forgetting. Participants completed an item directed forgetting task for positive, negative, and neutral words at high and lower levels of arousal while brain activity was recorded using electroencephalography (EEG). Behaviourally, recognition of to-be-remembered (TBR) and to-be-forgotten (TBF) items varied as a function of valence and arousal with reduced directed forgetting for high arousing negative and neutral words. In the brain, patterns of frontal and posterior activation in response to TBF and TBR cues respectively replicated prior EEG evidence to support involvement of inhibitory and selective rehearsal mechanisms in item directed forgetting. Interestingly, emotion only impacted cue-related posterior activity, which varied depending on specific interactions between valence and arousal. Together, results suggest that the brain handles valence and arousal differently and highlights the importance of considering in a collective manner the multidimensional nature of emotion in experimentation.

Mindfulness meditation practice and executive functioning: Breaking down the benefit.

This paper focuses on evidence for mindfulness meditation-related benefits to executive functioning, processes important for much of human volitional behaviour. Miyake et al. (2000) have shown that executive functions can be fractionated into three distinct domains including inhibition, working memory updating, and mental set shifting. Considering these separable domains, it is important to determine whether the effects of mindfulness can generalize to all three sub-functions or are specific to certain domains. To address this, the current review applied Miyake et al.'s (2000) fractionated model of executive functioning to the mindfulness literature. Empirical studies assessing the benefits of mindfulness to measures tapping the inhibition, updating, and shifting components of executive functioning were examined. Results suggest a relatively specific as opposed to general benefit resulting from mindfulness, with consistent inhibitory improvement, but more variable advantages to the updating and shifting domains. Recommendations surrounding application of mindfulness practice and future research are discussed.

Evaluating Intention and Effect: The Impact of Healthcare Facility Design on Patient and Staff Well-Being.

OBJECTIVE: This post occupancy evaluation (POE) assessed the impact of architectural design on psychosocial well-being among patients and staff in the context of a new complex continuing care and rehabilitation facility. BACKGROUND: Departing from typical POEs, the hospital design intentions formed the theoretical basis to assess outcomes. Intentions included creating an environment of wellness; enhancing connection to the community, the city, and nature; enhancing opportunities for social interaction; and inspiring activity. METHODS: A pretest-posttest quasi experiment, including quantitative surveys, assessed the impact of the building design on well-being outcomes across three facilities-the new hospital, the former hospital, and a comparison facility with a similar population. RESULTS: With the exception of connection to neighborhood (for patients) and opportunities to visit with others (for staff) and wayfinding (for patients and staff), impressions of the new hospital mirrored the design intentions relative to the former hospital and the comparison facility among patients and staff. Perceptions of improvement in mental health, self-efficacy in mobility, satisfaction, and interprofessional interactions were enhanced at the new hospital relative to the former hospital, whereas optimism, depressive symptoms, general well-being, burnout, and intention to quit did not vary. Interestingly, patients and staff with favorable impressions of the building design fared better on most well-being-related outcomes relative to those with less favorable impressions. CONCLUSIONS: Beyond the value of assessing the impact of the design intentions on outcomes, the approach used in this study would benefit evaluation strategies across a diversity of health and other public and large-scale buildings.

Positivity effect in source attributions of arousal-matched emotional and non-emotional words during item-based directed forgetting.

Consistent with their emphasis on emotional goals, older adults often exhibit a positivity bias in attention and memory relative to their young counterparts (i.e., a positivity effect). The current study sought to determine how this age-related positivity effect would impact intentional forgetting of emotional words, a process critical to efficient operation of memory. Using an item-based directed forgetting task, 36 young and 36 older adults studied a series of arousal-equivalent words that varied in valence (i.e., positive, negative, and neutral). Each word was followed by a cue to either remember or forget the word. A subsequent "tagging" recognition task required classification of items as to-be-remembered (TBR), to-be-forgotten (TBF), or new as a measure of directed forgetting and source attribution in participants' memory. Neither young nor older adults' intentional forgetting was affected by the valence of words. A goal-consistent valence effect did, however, emerge in older adults' source attribution performance. Specifically, older adults assigned more TBR-cues to positive words and more TBF-cues to negative words. Results are discussed in light of existing literature on emotion and directed forgetting as well as the socioemotional selectivity theory underlying the age-related positivity effect.