Cognitive and motivational selectivity in healthy aging

an article by Liyana T. Swirsky and Julia Spaniol (Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada) published in WIREs Cognitive Science Volume 10 Issue 6 (November/December 2019)

Visual abstract

Selectivity, the ability to prioritise thoughts and actions related to current goals, is both spared and impaired with ageing.
This review outlines factors that predict age‐related changes in cognitive and motivational selectivity, underlying neural mechanisms, and questions for future research.



Abstract

Normal ageing is associated with a reduction in the selectivity of cognitive processes such as attention and memory. This loss of selectivity is attributed to diminished inhibition and cognitive control mechanisms in older adults, which render them more susceptible to distraction and more likely to attend to and encode irrelevant information.

However, motivational selectivity appears largely preserved in ageing.

For example, older adults selectively avoid high‐demand tasks, exhibit a positivity bias in attention and memory, and show better memory for high‐value compared to low‐value information.

The aim of this review is to integrate these seemingly paradoxical findings of reduced and preserved selectivity in ageing, discuss potential neural mechanisms, and propose questions for future research.

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