Understanding Cognition in Middle Adulthood
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Birmingham
Department Name: School of Psychology
Abstract
Do you feel just like you did when you were 20? Are you as mentally nimble? Are your intuitions better or worse? How have the years (or perhaps decades) of experience affected the way you make decisions about whether to exercise or eat healthily or how much to save for retirement? While few would doubt that they had changed during their adult life, the surprising working assumption in Psychology is that our thinking and decision-making abilities reach a plateau after the turmoil of adolescence and stay at about the same level, until we experience a relatively rapid decline in our post-retirement years. Our project will explore this supposed "plateau" in thinking capacity by testing predictions about which kinds of ability should improve or decline across five decades of adult life. This project could potentially transform current understanding of development across the lifespan and help develop a much better basis for understanding how and why cognitive problems onset with advanced age.
The project is timely for both societal and academic reasons. Adulthood is the period during which people make the greatest societal and economic contribution, making critical decisions about the health and economic future of themselves and others. We are currently in a period of significant demographic change, with growing numbers of older and elderly adults, many still in the workforce making important decisions. Academically, there is increasing recognition that reasoning and decision-making depends upon two distinct kinds of process, suited to faster "intuitive" and slower "reflective" decisions, and that our reasoning is more often "hot" than "cold", being strongly influenced by emotion and motivation. Understanding how these processes and factors influence cognition differently as we mature through adulthood is the central academic goal of the project. An additional very exciting aspect of our project is that we will combine our academic questions with a series of practical inquiries about how people make real decisions about their own health and lifestyle, allowing us to link theory and practice within the same project.
Our methods are innovative and novel in their application to these questions. Though grounded in well-established laboratory tasks from developmental, cognitive, and social psychology, our primary source of data will come from custom made software apps installed on mobile tablets. We can use these apps to 'crowdsource' the data we need (by getting a large number of people to contribute), thereby using modern technologies to power our research. This will allow us to access a far larger number of participants who are more representative of the general population than those tested in typical laboratory studies. We will recruit people to help us with the study at a number of important public events (e.g., science and arts festivals) where we will also communicate to the public about our work. Conducting the project with this unique combination of tasks and this novel approach to data collection will also lay the groundwork for a programme of follow-up research, and lead the way in establishing these methods in UK social science research.
Our work will be of interest to a wide range of academic experts. We will share findings with them at expert conferences, through a workshop that we will organise at the end of the project, and by writing articles for scientific journals. The project will also be of great interest to those involved in popular brain and social science, as well as to people involved in policy and practice in relation to our shifting demography. To communicate with these stakeholders, we will hold periodic public engagement events throughout the project. These will simultaneously stimulate involvement in the project and help people become more aware of how adults make decisions and how thinking matures and changes during middle adulthood.
The project is timely for both societal and academic reasons. Adulthood is the period during which people make the greatest societal and economic contribution, making critical decisions about the health and economic future of themselves and others. We are currently in a period of significant demographic change, with growing numbers of older and elderly adults, many still in the workforce making important decisions. Academically, there is increasing recognition that reasoning and decision-making depends upon two distinct kinds of process, suited to faster "intuitive" and slower "reflective" decisions, and that our reasoning is more often "hot" than "cold", being strongly influenced by emotion and motivation. Understanding how these processes and factors influence cognition differently as we mature through adulthood is the central academic goal of the project. An additional very exciting aspect of our project is that we will combine our academic questions with a series of practical inquiries about how people make real decisions about their own health and lifestyle, allowing us to link theory and practice within the same project.
Our methods are innovative and novel in their application to these questions. Though grounded in well-established laboratory tasks from developmental, cognitive, and social psychology, our primary source of data will come from custom made software apps installed on mobile tablets. We can use these apps to 'crowdsource' the data we need (by getting a large number of people to contribute), thereby using modern technologies to power our research. This will allow us to access a far larger number of participants who are more representative of the general population than those tested in typical laboratory studies. We will recruit people to help us with the study at a number of important public events (e.g., science and arts festivals) where we will also communicate to the public about our work. Conducting the project with this unique combination of tasks and this novel approach to data collection will also lay the groundwork for a programme of follow-up research, and lead the way in establishing these methods in UK social science research.
Our work will be of interest to a wide range of academic experts. We will share findings with them at expert conferences, through a workshop that we will organise at the end of the project, and by writing articles for scientific journals. The project will also be of great interest to those involved in popular brain and social science, as well as to people involved in policy and practice in relation to our shifting demography. To communicate with these stakeholders, we will hold periodic public engagement events throughout the project. These will simultaneously stimulate involvement in the project and help people become more aware of how adults make decisions and how thinking matures and changes during middle adulthood.
Planned Impact
A key aim of the project is to radically change thinking about cognitive development during the middle adult years. Therefore, the main impact of the project will be felt by the academics that generate research and innovate practice in this field. Raising awareness of the complex nature of cognition during this period of life will inspire further research that will have implications for both theory and practice. The research will shed new light on developmental changes in cognitive processes and this new information will inform approaches to developing and testing interventions aimed at improving decision making in middle adulthood. Understanding the trajectories of cognition in adulthood also provides a critical context for research on cognitive decline and development of dementia in later age. Academic researchers working in different sub-disciplines of psychology, health and economic research will benefit from a new approach that links higher cognitive functions to everyday decision making. Researchers interested in health will be able to explore novel mechanisms that underpin choices about eating, drinking and exercise. Researchers working on cognition will have their work extended by introducing new motivational variables, helping to develop a broader research perspective. Developmental researchers will be inspired to study a period of life that has traditionally been neglected. Notably, the testing platform to be developed by the project will provide a practical and innovative method for studying the processes underlying decision making in middle adulthood. The project will provide a large data set that will be available for further analysis. Hence, the work will have impact by introducing a new approach to the field, which will enable traditionally different research topics to be integrated.
In addition to academic experts, the results of this project will benefit policy makers and public bodies responsible for the health and wellbeing of society by providing insight into how to communicate important social, financial, and health related information to this age group. Commercial organisations committed to providing healthy options in food products and fitness promotion services will also benefit in this way. Similarly financial, energy, and communication service providers will gain understanding that will help them frame consumer options more appropriately. Better understanding of decision-making processes in middle adulthood will also help to better target and design health interventions, and so the results will benefit health professionals. The public will benefit from the translation of research outputs into interventions designed to help them lead healthier lives and make sensible consumer choices.
The public organisations/venues in which we will hold public engagement events (local science, art, and history museums, public libraries and the University) will benefit by exhibitions to draw in the public and provide information about thinking and decision-making abilities across the lifespan.
The project researcher will benefit from training on multidisciplinary research, using mobile apps. This will also enhance UK capacity in cutting edge approaches to social science research that seeks to sample from nationally representative populations.
In addition to academic experts, the results of this project will benefit policy makers and public bodies responsible for the health and wellbeing of society by providing insight into how to communicate important social, financial, and health related information to this age group. Commercial organisations committed to providing healthy options in food products and fitness promotion services will also benefit in this way. Similarly financial, energy, and communication service providers will gain understanding that will help them frame consumer options more appropriately. Better understanding of decision-making processes in middle adulthood will also help to better target and design health interventions, and so the results will benefit health professionals. The public will benefit from the translation of research outputs into interventions designed to help them lead healthier lives and make sensible consumer choices.
The public organisations/venues in which we will hold public engagement events (local science, art, and history museums, public libraries and the University) will benefit by exhibitions to draw in the public and provide information about thinking and decision-making abilities across the lifespan.
The project researcher will benefit from training on multidisciplinary research, using mobile apps. This will also enhance UK capacity in cutting edge approaches to social science research that seeks to sample from nationally representative populations.
Organisations
Publications
Dodgson D
(2016)
Value-associated stimuli can modulate cognitive control settings.
in Journal of Vision
Gupta R
(2016)
Motivational salience produces hemispheric asymmetries in visual processing
in Journal of Vision
Thomas PM
(2016)
Value conditioning modulates visual working memory processes.
in Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance
Raymond, J. E.
(2017)
Social rewards promote habitual behaviour in low-autism trait adults
Raymond JE
(2019)
Strategic Eye Movements are Used to Support Object Authentication.
in Scientific reports
Description | The main aim of this project was to develop a cross-platform custom app to assess a wide range of higher cognitive processes in adults and to monitor how they change across the middle years of adulthood (25-65 years). As a result of a considerable team effort, the project has produced several key findings. First, the project has delivered a fully functioning, sophisticated, cross-platform app for data collection that has a visually pleasing design and smooth user interface and that is available to the public for participation. The app is yielding a rich, complex set of data regarding health, lifestyle, economic well-being, personality, psychotic experiences, mental health, simple cognitive functions, learning, memory, risk taking, counterfactual thinking, perspective taking, including social perspectives, and social world size. It runs on phones and tablets of nearly all brands and allows participants to work through the entire study at their own pace. To date we have over 530 registrants from 27 countries around the globe, ranging in age from 18 - 89. Development of the app involved working closely with a software developer and provided excellent training opportunities for both them and us. Second, the data obtained to date are showing interesting patterns in life-span development with regard to cognitive control and impulsivity. Self-reported impulsivity increases from the early to middle decades and then declines, whereas objective measures of control over response impulses show steady, albeit modest, improvements during adulthood. Nevertheless, as people age there are modest declines in association learning, visual memory, and response speed. Considered together, the data suggest that adults become more cautious and measured as they age. Interestingly, adult bilinguals show more evidence of cognitive control than monolinguals across a range of measures. Third, as people age, their reports of regret, including how they reflect on their own experience of regret and predict other people's regret, appears to change over middle age with adults in the older decades being less influenced by regret. Yet, the manner in which adults make actual decisions between risky outcomes does not reveal age-related change. Perhaps most importantly, the lack of relations between our measures of regret suggests that there is much to be done in terms of defining this emotion psychologically and understanding its different aspects. Fourth, initial data analysis suggests that autism-like traits show relative stability across the lifespan in women, but an increase from middle age onwards in men. Follow-up analyses will investigate the degree to which this is determined by other factors that vary within our sample, and we will consider how cohort effects as well as endogenous age-related changes may give rise to such effects. Adults with high autistic traits also appear to show less evidence of implicit mentalising compared to those with low autistic traits. This result contrasts with recent findings from adults diagnosed with autism, who showed typical implicit mentalising on the same task, but fits with an emerging pattern of results in the scientific literature suggesting that implicit mentalising may be more affected by autistic traits than explicit mentalising. |
Exploitation Route | Other researchers may wish to use the app and they may also wish to interrogate the data set when it is more complete. The research findings may be useful for understanding how adults make decisions and for development of health information and strategies for behaviour change. The findings may contribute to studies on gender differences, effects/benefits of bilingualism, provision of healthy baselines against which to study emerging age-related loss in cognitive function through diseases, such as Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, how interactions of personality variables contribute to lifestyle decisions. Understanding of how mobile app technology can be used to study psychological function will allow researchers to further exploit this technology for scientific purposes and thus further advance this field of study. |
Sectors | Creative Economy Education Financial Services and Management Consultancy Healthcare Leisure Activities including Sports Recreation and Tourism Retail |
Description | The findings and experience obtained from this project have positively benefitted UK software companies. Specifically, Ounce Technology Ltd., (https://ouncetech.co.uk/) a UK software company that developed the application program for this project has gained valuable experience and are now an established company specialising in the mental health and experimental psychology use of mobile tablet and smartphone based testing and evaluation of cognitive function in adults and children. Participation in our project enabled Ounce to develop advanced techniques for dealing with multiple test formats, data transfer and analysis issues, as well as developing improved user interface systems. The company has attracted more contracts (e.g., MRC funded projects, NHS projects) as a result of their participation on this project. In addition the process of developing mobile tablet based software has benefitted researchers on the project by encouraging them to use mobile apps for data collection on new projects. Some have engaged Ounce but others have sought other UK software companies, thus widening the benefits to industry. The data-based findings of the study are still undergoing analysis and write-up so the impact of this work is still unfolding. |
First Year Of Impact | 2016 |
Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Healthcare |
Impact Types | Economic |
Title | Lifestyle and Higher Cognitive Function in Adults 2016 |
Description | The main aim of this research project was to develop a cross-platform custom app to assess a wide range of higher cognitive processes in adults and to monitor how they change across the middle years of adulthood (25-65 years). As a result of a considerable team effort, the project has delivered a fully functioning, sophisticated, cross-platform app for data collection that has a visually pleasing design and smooth user interface and that is available to the public for participation. The app has yielded a rich data set containing self-report measures, questionnaires, and a set of 'games" requiring choices and actions that are monitored. The data deposited contains partial or complete entries from 389 registrants from 31 countries around the globe. The data set contains a range of measures concerning basic demographics, health, eating, exercise and lifestyle, economic well-being, and social network size. The data set also reports a range of personality measures. Many of the measures reported in the data set reflect performance on the various games in the app. The measures are either the proportion of times a particular choice was made, the average time it took to make that choice within each game, or an average rating scale measure of how participants felt after particular trials in the game. The games are (a) a risk-taking choice task, (b) a risk aversion game, (c) desire/belief game where the participant guesses the choices another person would make (d) a perspective taking game where the participant reports what s/he or another person can see, (e) a visual search task with different types of distractors, (f) a value learning task , and (g) a short term visual memory task. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2017 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | There have two enquiries about the data base and one person has downloaded the data set. |
URL | http://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/852346 |
Company Name | Ounce Technology Limited |
Description | Ounce Technology is a software company that specializes in designing, building, and managing software applications. |
Year Established | 2010 |
Impact | The company has helped numerous ESRC and MRC funded projects develop testing programs. |
Website | http://www.ouncetech.co.uk |
Description | - Pint of Science, Beautiful Mind, Birmingham Cherry Reds |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | Pint of Science is an international science festival held in pubs around the world. OWL researchers took the opportunity to promote the OWL app to attendees at the Birmingham events, and Dr Sarah Beck from the OWL project was one of the key speakers at the Birmingham events. The events were sold out, attracting 150 visitors across the three nights. The visitors were aged between 18 and 80. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
Description | Act Your Age Pub Quiz, University of Birmingham |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | As part of the University of Birmingham's Arts and Science Festival, OWL researchers hosted an arts and science themed pub quiz at the Bratby Bar at the University of Birmingham. Attendees were challenged with tough quiz questions and learned about how ageing affects different cognitive functions through the lifespan. The event attracted about 10 attendees, aged between 25 and 50. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
Description | An invited keynote to the primo international conference on banknote design |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | A keynote address entitled: "Banknote Security: What do the public really look at?" This talk presented theory and methods about human eye movements and cognition and their application to understanding how the general public authenticate banknotes. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
URL | http://www.banknotedesignersconference.com/4/1.html |
Description | Art & Science Public Lecture |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | A series of lecture on how to interpret fine art paintings on display at the Barber Institute for Fine Arts using ideas and knowledge from Cognitive Neuroscience. The talks present basic concept and methods from Cognitive Neuroscience to members of the general Public and help them see fine art in a new way. The audience then engage in a active gallery tour. They report seeing and enjoying art in an new way and gaining understanding of brain science. Events have been "sold" out and last year a repeat performance was engaged. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016,2017 |
URL | http://barber.org.uk/arts-science-festival-evening-lecture/ |
Description | Arts vs Science Bake Off, University of Birmingham |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | As part of the Arts and Science Festival at the University of Birmingham, OWL organised an Arts vs Science Bake Off. The event offered the opportunity to promote the OWL project to more than 100 visitors. Staff and students at the University of Birmingham were invited to bring art and science themed cakes to Staff House at the University of Birmingham to sell for charity. The event was a great success and raised £165 for Oxfam. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
Description | Birmingham Brain Challenge, Library of Birmingham |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | As part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science, OWL researchers organised a promotional event at the Library of Birmingham. The event aimed to engage the public with the research we are doing to investigate changes in high level cognition in middle adulthood. Visitors to the library were invited to complete a fun 'sticky dot survey'. Different coloured stickers were used for different age groups as a means of engaging visitors with our central question: "Does decision making change with age?". Visitors chose the appropriate dots and added them to posters in response to a number of questions about how they make decisions. The researchers also explained the project in more detail, and informed the visitors about how to take part in the OWL project. More than 70 visitors took part in the survey, ranging in age from 14 to 87. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
URL | http://www.onlinewisdomlab.co.uk |
Description | Bring on the Brains at Community Day, University of Birmingham |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | Researchers organised an event at the University of Birmingham's Community Day to promote the OWL app and Cognition and motivation Research. Over 100 families visited the stall. The event was a great success and the stall had a crowd of people around it all day long. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
Description | Citizen Science Center |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | The Citizen Science Centre is an on-line forum promoting citizen science apps. OWL is featured there currently. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
URL | http://www.citizensciencecenter.com/category/app-based-citizen-science/ |
Description | Dividing Lines: A Brain Science view on Landscape Paintings |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | A discussion of a artwork exhibited at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts centred around principles of Vision Science. The presentation provided an opportunity to educate and illuminate the general public about brain mechanisms underlying scene perception and aesthetic responses. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
URL | http://barber.org.uk/arts-science-festival-evening-lecture/ |
Description | Keynote to European Central Bank Conference on cash and counterfeiting |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | An invited keynote lecture "Perception and Banknotes" to a group of high level decision makers at the European Central Bank and related bank-note and secure document industry leaders: The presentation focused on how principles of Human Perception and Cognitive Science address problems of the public's role in banknote authentication. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | La Presse |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | The prominent French language newspaper highlighted OWL on their citizen Science section and this continues as a post. This generated hundred of people in Canada to gain an interest in the research program. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
URL | http://plus.lapresse.ca/screens/f2a26e7d-ddfc-46e4-9abe-c62069614830%7C_0.html |
Description | Meet the Experts, Thinktank Museum |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | OWL researchers have taken part in a series of Meet the Expert Events at Birmingham's Thinktank science museum. At these events there was a stand with a number of different activities for children and adults. The researchers informed museum visitors about the University of Birmingham's research into cognitive development from early childhood right through to old age. Collaboration with Thinktank is a prime opportunity to pilot and promote the OWL app to an engaged audience. Around 200 museum visitors engaged with the event. These visitors were mostly parents, and some grandparents, of children visiting the museum, and were aged between 20 and 80. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
URL | http://www.onlinewisdomlab.co.uk/ |
Description | Midlife Matters, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | This event was run by an MA student, Samal Kazybayeva. She had a stand in the entrance hall of the popular Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, where she invited visitors to the museum to take part in a sticky dot survey (as described above), and promoted the OWL project. The event attracted around 80 visitors. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
Description | Psychological Science and communication in the legal professions |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | A presentation about Psychological Science and how it can be exploited to improve communication in the legal professions |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | SciStarter |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | SciStarter is an on-line citizen forum that highlights OWL. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
URL | http://scistarter.com/project/1323-The%20Online%20Wisdom%20Lab%20(OWL) |
Description | Scientific American |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | Scientific American promoted the OWL app on their Citizen Science website. For several weeks is was on the front page but it continues to be accessible as project from their site. This has generated significant interest in the project from around the world leading to hundreds of people participating in the citizen science project, OWL |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
URL | http://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science/the-online-wisdom-lab-owl/ |
Description | ThinksWeDon'tKnow |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | The project was highlighted on the Things We Don't Know website |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
URL | http://blog.thingswedontknow.com/2015/07/midlife-matters.html |