![Sample our Health and Social Care journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5938/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Health-Social-Care.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Objective: Recently, motivation has been found to attenuate the age-related decline in Theory of Mind (ToM) performance (i.e. faux pas recognition). However, whether or not this effect could be generalized to other ToM tasks is still unknown. In the present study, we investigated whether and how motivation could enhance older adults’ performance and reduce age differences in ToM tasks (Faux Pas vs. Animation task) that differ in familiarity.
Method: Following a previous paradigm, 171 Chinese adults (87 younger adults and 84 older adults) were recruited, and we experimentally manipulated the level of perceived closeness between participants and the experimenter before administering the ToM tasks in order to enhance participants’ motivation.
Results: Results showed that, for the Faux Pas task, we replicated previous findings such that older adults under the enhanced motivation conditions performed equally well as younger adults. Conversely, for the Animation task, younger adults outperformed older adults, regardless of motivation.
Discussion: These results indicate that motivation can enhance older adults’ performance in ToM tasks, however, this beneficial effect cannot be generalized across ToM tasks.
Acknowledgments
We thank Bobby Melloy for editing a draft version of the manuscript and the anonymous reviewers for their detailed comments that have significantly improved the article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Student helpers, who did not know the purpose of the experiment, were all university undergraduate students recruited through advertisement in universities. Before administrating tasks, student helpers were trained by the experimenter of the study on the experiment protocol.
2. Decision on the sample size was made by a power analysis. By consulting a power analysis table, we selected α = .05 and medium to large effect size. To reach a power of .80, the required sample size for each cell would be 20 – 25.
3. The daily activity scale was split in half; the first half was administered before the first ToM task and the second half before the second ToM task, as we wanted to make sure that the manipulation was active when the participants completed each ToM task.
4. For the Faux Pas task, success rate = total points / 10; for the Animation task, success rate = (appropriateness score + intentionality score) / 8.