Adult aging and social attention: the role of cognitive decline and social motivation.

Context:
Social isolation is one of the most prevalent problems for older adults, but we know relatively little about age differences in social communication skills likely to be important in initiating and maintaining relationships. The current project will focus on one particular aspect of social communication: why do older people engage less in mutual gaze than younger people? Older adults are less likely than young to attend to, and follow the eye gaze direction of, other people. This is likely to be important, because attending to another's gaze is an informative social cue which facilitates joint understanding and communication. There are two opposing theoretical explanations for age differences in gaze following. First, older adults may follow gaze less than young because of declining perceptual and cognitive processes. Second, older adults may show less gaze following because the typical paradigms used in experimental studies to date are not socially motivating for them. We will use novel experimental manipulations to test the role of the perceptual, cognitive and motivational mechanisms underlying age difference in attention to others' eye gaze.

To date, all of the studies of adult age differences in gaze following have used decontextualized pictures of unfamiliar faces. Here we will use innovative eye-tracking technology to test the extent of age differences in attention to gaze in complex social scenes and real interpersonal interactions. Also we will explore the relationship between gaze following in a range of different tasks and measures of broader social functioning in older adults.

Aims:
The research has three main aims:
1) To test the role of cognitive and motivational mechanisms in age differences in following eye gaze, using novel manipulations of experimental paradigms.
2) To explore how older adults' differential use of gaze cues extend to the processing of more complex social scenes and influence real social interactions with both familiar others and strangers.
3) To establish whether gaze following is related to everyday social functioning and communication skills in older adults.
These aims will be achieved by harnessing the applicants' complementary expertise in aging, visual attention, and social cognition to develop novel paradigms using eye-tracking technology to understand social attention in interpersonal interactions.

Applications/benefits:
We will develop a new model of how aging influences the way in which we attend to other people, and how this relates to social functioning more broadly. The project will also increase understanding of the pattern of younger adults' social attention to older adults, and thus improve models of intergeneration communication. Understanding more about how younger and older people interact is important in developing interventions to improve intergenerational relationships, helping isolated older people improve social interaction skills, and in the longer term to address issues surrounding social isolation. This project will also increase theoretical understanding of the nature of gaze following, and how it is influenced by perceptual, cognitive and motivational factors. A key benefit will be a more integrated and multi-dimensional theory of social attention in old age.

Outlined below are some key beneficiaries of the research, and some information on how they will benefit. Note that there is more detail in the relevant sections on Academic Beneficiaries and Pathways to Impact.

Healthcare workers, social care workers and charity groups with an interest in older people:
Local and national groups for older people will have a stake in the current research, which models cognitive and motivational mechanisms of age differences in social attention. Understanding more about how younger and older people interact is important in developing interventions to assist intergenerational relationships, help isolated older people improve social interaction skills, and in the longer term to address issues surrounding social isolation in old age. We will organise a dissemination event towards the end of the project aimed at communicating the results to older people's groups, relevant charity, healthcare and local authority groups, as well as interested academics and practitioners. The results of the research will also be disseminated through a project website, media engagement, and public engagement talks in both the UK and Australia (for details see Pathways to Impact).

Older people: During the research we will engage with local community groups to contribute to aspects of study design. Aberdeen/Grampian has a large network of groups and activities aimed at older adults, and we will contribute to these during the project. The studies will be discussed at local meetings, and we will ensure that our website/leaflets are user-friendly for younger and older people. Gaining knowledge of intergenerational differences in interpersonal communication will be of interest to many older people, and potentially younger people too.

Academic beneficiaries: psychologists. This project will use novel tasks to model the motivational and cognitive mechanisms of social attention. The results will increase understanding of both younger and older adults' attention to other people in the same and different age groups: thus improving our understanding of intergeneration communication. This research will be of interest to researchers in social attention and cognitive aging. Research will be disseminated through academic conferences in experimental psychology, social psychology and visual attention. Articles from the research will be targeted at journals with broad psychological reach (e.g. Journal of Experimental Psychology, Psychological Science) to ensure maximum influence.

Academic beneficiaries: gerontologists. This will be the first research to extend knowledge about age differences in gaze following to real interpersonal interactions, and look at links to everyday social functioning. The results addressing the cognitive and motivational mechanisms underlying age differences in social attention will be of particular interest to psychologists researching cognitive changes with age. Analyses of links with social participation will be of interest more broadly to social gerontologists and geriatricians. Results will be presented to multidisciplinary conferences in gerontology, as well as meetings aimed at healthcare professionals with an academic interest in aging. Articles from this research will be targeted at multidisciplinary aging journals (e.g. Journal of Gerontology, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society).