Individual differences in switching and inhibition predict perspective-taking across the lifespan

Abstract

Studies exploring the influence of executive functions (EF) on perspective-taking have focused on inhibition and working memory in young adults or clinical populations. Less consideration has been given to more complex capacities that also involve switching attention between perspectives, or to changes in EF and concomitant effects on perspective-taking across the lifespan. To address this, we assessed whether individual differences in inhibition and attentional switching in healthy adults (ages 17-84) predict performance on a task in which speakers identified targets for a listener with size-contrasting competitors in common or privileged ground. Modification differences across conditions decreased with age. Further, perspective taking interacted with EF measures: youngest adults' sensitivity to perspective was best captured by their inhibitory performance; oldest adults' sensitivity was best captured by switching performance. Perspective-taking likely involves multiple aspects of EF, as revealed by considering a wider range of EF tasks and individual capacities across the lifespan.

The association between executive functioning and parental stress and psychological distress is mediated by parental reflective functioning in mothers with substance use disorder

“…Partly supporting our expectations, cognitive flexibility but not working memory showed unique contribution to variance in parental stress. Supporting our results, individual differences in cognitive flexibility have recently been suggested to be important for regulatory capacities associated with perspective taking (Long, Horton, Rohde, & Sorace, ). Previous studies have found that cognitive flexibility is impaired in individuals with SUD (Cunha et al, ).…”

Age-related differences in multimodal recipient design: younger, but not older adults, adapt speech and co-speech gestures to common ground

“…As for cognitive abilities, we assessed speakers' verbal and visual working memory (verbal and visual WM) as well as executive control and semantic fluency. As summarised above, verbal WM and executive function have previously been related to verbal recipient design (Hupet et al, 1993;Long et al, 2018;Wardlow, 2013). Furthermore, verbal and visual WM have been found to be related to gesticulation in general (e.g.…”

“…Taking an addressee's perspective into account and designing one's utterances accordingly may be a cognitively demanding process (e.g. Horton & Gerrig, 2005;Horton & Spieler, 2007;Long, Horton, Rohde, & Sorace, 2018;Wardlow, 2013). Considering that healthy human ageing is frequently associated with changes in cognitive functioning (Salthouse, 1991), systematic agerelated changes in multimodal recipient design may be expected.…”

“…Hupet et al (1993) speculate that deficits in executive control could cause older adults to have difficulties inhibiting irrelevant, egocentric information from entering memory (see also Hasher & Zacks, 1988), which may explain why they have difficulties with partner-specific adaptations in dialogue. Furthermore, executive control has also been related to perspectivetaking abilities in younger (Wardlow, 2013) and older adults (Long et al, 2018). Thus, executive control may be underlying the ability to inhibit one's own, egocentric perspective in favour of the addressee's, another crucial component of successful verbal recipient design Keysar, Barr, & Horton, 1998; see also Brown-Schmidt, 2009, for the role of executive function in perspective-taking during language comprehension).…”

Poor coherence in older people's speech is explained by impaired semantic and executive processes

“…The ability to produce coherent speech tends to decline as people grow older. Older adults are more likely to produce tangential, offtopic utterances in conversation (Arbuckle & Gold, 1993;Glosser & Deser, 1992) and to provide irrelevant information when telling a story (Juncos-Rabadan, Pereiro, & Rodriguez, 2005;Marini, Boewe, Caltagirone, & Carlomagno, 2005) or describing an object (Long, Horton, Rohde, & Sorace, 2018). Such changes reduce the effectiveness of communication and the quality of older people's verbal interactions Pushkar et al, 2000).…”