The role of illness burden in theory of mind performance among older adults

Cognitive and Affective Theory of Mind in Healthy Aging

“…A strength of the current study is that the Yoni paradigm allowed us to evaluate both cognitive and affective ToM as well as first and second order inferences within a single task. For cognitive ToM, the present finding that aging was associated with changes in performance is in line with findings from previous studies that have examined the effect of healthy aging on ToM components within the same task (Baksh et al, 2018;Bottiroli et al, 2016;Fischer et al, 2017;Walzak & Loken Thornton, 2018). For affective ToM, our finding that aging adversely impacted performance is in line with results reported by Fischer et al (2017) but in contrast with those of Bottiroli et al (2016).…”

“…Overall, the current results corroborate that aging is associated with changes in both cognitive and affective ToM (cf. Baksh et al, 2018;Fischer et al, 2017;Walzak & Loken Thornton, 2018) and further refine our understanding of age differences in ToM. Specifically, we demonstrate that decision processes underlying ToM inferences are slower in older adults, but that this slowing does not affect the outcome of the decision (i.e., no ToM deficit).…”

“…Fischer et al (2017) found that older adults performed worse than younger adults on all four ToM indices, suggesting that these age differences were robust across tasks and components. Similarly, within a group of older adults aged 65-89 years, Walzak and Loken Thornton (2018) found that increasing age was associated with poorer cognitive and affective ToM performance. In another study, Bottiroli, Cavallini, Ceccato, Vecchi, and Lecce (2016) used the faux pas test to assess both cognitive and affective ToM in three groups of young adults (19-27y), young-old adults (60-70y), and old-old adults (71-82y).…”

“…This distinction is relevant given indications from previous work that aging mainly affects the latter type of inferences (Duval et al, 2011;Moran, 2013). The observation that the studies reporting age effects on both cognitive and affective ToM (i.e., Baskh et al, 2018, ESCoT paradigm;Fischer et al 2017;Walzak & Loken Thornton, 2018) included both inference types -yet did not analyze these separately -while the studies reporting age effects on cognitive but not affective ToM only assessed first order inferences (Baksh et al, 2018, traditional measures;Bottiroli et al, 2016) further advocates for such a distinction.…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, only a few studies to date have examined the effect of healthy aging on both cognitive and affective ToM within the same task. For instance, Fischer, O'Rourke, and Loken Thornton (2017) and Walzak and Loken Thornton (2018) used three tasks to assess ToM in a group of young adults and a group of older adults: the strange stories task to assess cognitive ToM, the "reading the mind in the eyes" test (RMET) to assess affective ToM, and the Yoni task to evaluate both cognitive and affective ToM. In the strange stories task, participants are presented a story and are then asked why the main character acted as they did.…”