Age-related changes in the effects of induced positive affect on executive control in younger and older adults—evidence from a task-switching paradigm

ABSTRACT

Positive affect has been shown to promote task-switching performance in healthy young adults. Given the well-documented age-related decline in executive functioning, we asked whether induced positive affect also helps to improve task-switching performance in older adults. Sixty-eight younger and older adults performed a switching task before and after they had watched cartoon clips (positive affect group) or documentaries (neutral affect group). Positive affect was associated with reduced error rates across all trial types in both age groups. In older adults, the increase in accuracy came at the expense of slower response times for task-switch trials, resulting in greater switch costs. This pattern of findings is inconsistent with the popular notion that positive affect supports greater cognitive flexibility. Instead, positive affect may trigger adjustments in response control settings – such as a shift in the speed-accuracy trade-off toward more cautious responding – depending on the experienced level of task difficulty.

KEYWORDS:

• Task switching
• positive affect
• aging
• executive functions
• cognitive control

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Ansaf Ewaiwi, Katharina Stenger, Christine Schuck, and Jessica Baumgartner for their help with the recruitment of the participants and the data collection. This research was supported by a start-up grant from Saarland University to Julia Karbach.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [K.U.], upon reasonable request.

Notes

1. Note that neither of the group differences would have survived a correction for multiple comparisons.

2. We chose this effect as the current version of G*Power is limited to analyses for designs with one within-subjects factor and one between-subjects factor. Note that this limitation does not apply to factorial designs without repeated measures and vice versa.

3. Error rates were modeled using a logit link function.