
Louise H PhillipsUniversity of Aberdeen | ABDN · School of Psychology
Louise H Phillips
PhD
About
160
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Introduction
I am interested in how lifespan aging influences social and emotional skills, how this relates to cognitive function and well-being.
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (160)
Numerous studies have shown a positive relationship between reading fiction and Theory of Mind (ToM) in children and young adults. However, there is little evidence to evaluate how reading habits relate to ToM in older adults. Also, nearly all studies exploring this topic have focused only on Western participants. In the current study of 229 partic...
Different physical activity types vary in metabolic demand (intensity), but also in non-metabolic physical demand (balance, co-ordination, speed and flexibility), cognitive demand (attention, memory and decision making), and social demand (social interaction). Activity types with different combinations of demands may have different effects on healt...
Recent research suggests that expectations play an important role in emotion perception within a predictive processing framework. Prior expectations are proposed to help us resolve ambiguity and uncertainty in particular. We investigated for the first time whether facial expression intensity influences the degree of reliance on prior expectations t...
Previous research investigated age differences in gaze following with an attentional cueing paradigm where participants view a face with averted gaze, and then respond to a target appearing in a location congruent or incongruent with the gaze cue. However, this paradigm is far removed from the way we use gaze cues in everyday settings. Here we reco...
Objectives
Older adults are often less accurate than younger counterparts at identifying emotions such as anger, sadness and fear from faces. They also look less at the eyes and more at the mouth during emotion perception. The current studies advance understanding of the nature of these age effects on emotional processing.
Method
Younger and older...
Given limitations in the amount of visual information that a person can simultaneously process through to conscious perception, selective visual attention is necessary. Visual signals in the environment aid this selection process by triggering reflexive shifts of covert attention to locations of potential importance. One such signal appears to be o...
The present study aimed to investigate the affect-cognition interplay in young and older adults by studying prospective memory (PM), the realisation of delayed intentions. While most previous studies on the topic were conducted in the laboratory, we examined the influence of naturally occurring affect on PM tasks carried out in participants' everyd...
Given limitations in the amount of visual information that a person can simultaneously process through to conscious perception, selective visual attention is necessary. Visual signals in the environment aid this selection process by triggering reflexive shifts of covert attention to locations of potential importance. One such signal appears to be o...
Objectives
Older adults tend to have poorer Theory of Mind (ToM) than their younger counterparts, and this has been shown in both Western and Asian cultures. We examined the role of working memory (WM) in age differences in ToM, and whether this was moderated by education and culture (UK versus Malaysia).
Method
We used two ToM tests with differin...
Searching for an object in a complex scene is influenced by high-level factors such as how much the item would be expected in that setting (semantic consistency). There is also evidence that a person gazing at an object directs our attention towards it. However, there has been little previous research that has helped to understand how we integrate...
Planning ability is important in everyday functioning, and a key measure to assess the preparation and execution of plans is the Tower of London (ToL) task. Previous studies indicate that older adults are often less accurate than the young on the ToL and that there may be cultural differences in performance on the task. However, potential interacti...
People with multiple sclerosis (MS) can experience problems in interpreting others’ emotions from faces or voices. However, to date little is known about whether difficulties in emotion perception in MS are related to broader aspects of social functioning. Also, there are few studies reporting the effect of MS on more ecologically valid assessments...
Epigenetic imprinting is important for neurogenesis and brain function. Hippocampal volumes and brain hyperintensities in late life have been associated with early life circumstances. Epigenetic imprinting may underpin these associations. Methylation was measured at 982 sites in 13 imprinted locations in blood samples from a longitudinal cohort by...
Older adults tend to have poorer mental state understanding (Theory of Mind, ToM) than their younger counterparts, including in both Western and Asian cultures. The current study aimed to directly investigate whether there are any cultural differences in the pattern of age effects on ToM tasks. Given evidence of cultural differences in the developm...
Biological motion perception is the ability of the visual system to perceive complex human movement patterns. The previous studies have shown a direct link between attentional abilities and performance on biological motion tasks, both of which have been shown to deteriorate with age. However, it is not known whether there is a direct link between a...
Everyday fluctuations in mood can influence our ability to remember to carry out intentions (prospective memory [PM]). Theories of mood-cognition interaction make differing predictions about the effects of positive and negative mood states on cognition that may change in aging. To test these predictions, we looked at the effects of age and induced...
Relative to their young counterparts, older adults are poorer at recognizing facial expressions. A 2008 meta-analysis of 17 facial emotion recognition data sets showed that these age-related difficulties are not uniform. Rather, they are greatest for the emotions of anger, fear, and sadness, comparative with happiness and surprise, with no age-effe...
Objective: People with multiple sclerosis (pwMS) who experience higher levels of anger also report poorer quality of life (QoL). This qualitative study explored the subjective experience of anger amongst pwMS, and how anger influenced their lives.
Methods: A series of semi-structured, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 20 pwMS. Interviews...
Older adults sometimes experience difficulty in decoding non-literal language, such as sarcastic statements where the underlying meaning differs from the literal words used. Given that sarcasm usually communicates a negative message this age effect might be explained by a positivity bias in old age. Here we test this for the first time by looking a...
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0211799.].
Genomic imprinting is important for normal brain development and aberrant imprinting has been associated with impaired cognition. We studied the imprinting status in selected imprints (H19, IGF2, SNRPN, PEG3, MEST1, NESPAS, KvDMR, IG-DMR and ZAC1) by pyrosequencing in blood samples from longitudinal cohorts born in 1936 (n = 485) and 1921 (n = 223)...
Genomic locations of pyrosequencing assays in Homo sapiens genome v37.
Chromosome, start and end coordinates for each differentially methylated region (DMR) are tabulated.
(DOCX)
ABC21 and ABC36 pyrosequencing data.
Methylation levels at H19ICR, IGF2, SNRPN, PEG3, MEST1, NESPAS, KvDMR, ZAC1 and IGDMR1 imprints determined by pyrosequencing in blood samples from the ABC21 and ABC36 cohorts alongside the following cohort database variables: cohort (ABCgroup), sex, weight (wgt), height (hgt), body mass index (bmi), Scottish Ind...
Working memory (WM) represents the capacity to store and process a limited amount of information. To better understand developmental changes of WM forms a key topic in research on neuropsychology of aging. Previous studies reveal age differences in WM and in executive functions (EFs). Although EFs are seen as essential mechanisms in WM, the specifi...
Age-related differences on theory of mind (ToM) tasks are well established. However, the literature has been criticised for predominantly relying on tasks with poor ecological validity, and consequently it remains unclear whether these age differences extend to tasks with greater realism. In addition, we currently have a limited understanding of th...
Older adults perceive less intense negative emotion in facial expressions compared to younger counterparts. Prior research has also demonstrated that mood alters facial emotion perception. Nevertheless, there is little evidence which evaluates the interactive effects of age and mood on emotion perception. This study investigated the effects of sad...
Objective:
Cognitive deficits following stroke are well documented, but less is known about problems with social skills such as understanding others' thoughts and feelings. This study investigated the effect of stroke on a visual-affective measure of social understanding: the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (RMET). The aims were to investigate w...
People with Alzheimer's disease (AD) show problems with social processing in tasks which require the understanding of others' mental states. However traditional social processing tasks are cognitively complex, which may influence the effects of AD. Less is known about how AD influences more basic aspects of social perception, such as the ability to...
Physical activity is associated with greater independence in old age. However, little is known about the effect of physical activity level and activity type on activities of daily living (ADL). This review systematically analyzed the effects of physical activity level and activity type on ADL in older adults (mean age, 60+). Electronic search metho...
Sketching is considered by artists and designers to be a vital tool in the creative process. However, research shows that externalisation during the creative process (i.e., sketching) is not necessary to create effectively. This study examines whether sketching may play a more important role in the subjective experience of creativity by facilitatin...
The ability to perceive biological motion has been shown to deteriorate with age, and it is assumed that older adults rely more on the global form than local motion information when processing point-light walkers. Further, it has been suggested that biological motion processing in ageing is related to a form-based global processing bias. Here, we i...
Objectives:
Older adults have difficulties in identifying most facial expressions of emotion. However, most aging studies have presented static photographs of intense expressions, whereas in everyday experience people see emotions that develop and change. The present study was designed to assess whether age-related difficulties with emotion recogn...
Younger and older adults differ in performance on a range of social–cognitive skills, with older adults having difficulties in decoding nonverbal cues to emotion and intentions. Such skills are likely to be important when deciding whether someone is being sarcastic. In the current study we investigated in a life span sample whether there are age-re...
The ability to perceive biological motion has been shown to deteriorate with age and it has been shown previously that older adults rely more on the form than the local motion information when processing point-light walkers (Pilz et al., 2010, Vision Research). Recently, it has been suggested that biological motion processing in ageing is related t...
Both healthy aging and dementia cause problems with emotion perception, and the impairment is generally greater for specific emotions (anger, sadness and fear). Most studies to date have focused on static facial photographs of emotions. The current study investigated the effects of healthy aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD) on the ability to decode...
Both healthy aging and dementia cause problems with emotion perception, and the impairment is generally greater for specific emotions (anger, sadness and fear). Most studies to date have focused on static facial photographs of emotions. The current study investigated the effects of healthy aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD) on the ability to decode...
Episodic future thinking (EFT), the ability to project into the future to 'pre-experience' an event, and prospective memory (PM), remembering to perform an intended action, are both examples of future orientated cognition. Recently it has been suggested that EFT might contribute to PM performance but to date few studies have examined the relationsh...
Socio-cognitive skills are crucial for successful interpersonal interactions. Two particularly important socio-cognitive processes are emotion perception (EP) and theory of mind (ToM), but agreement is lacking on terminology and conceptual links between these constructs. Here we seek to clarify the relationship between the two at multiple levels, f...
Introduction:
Little is known about the influence of multiple sclerosis (MS) on the regulation of emotion. The current study tested whether people with MS report more emotion regulation difficulties than healthy controls. The relationship between emotion regulation and other important variables (mood, quality of life, and executive function) was e...
Unlabelled:
Following stroke, individuals often experience reduced social participation, regardless of physical limitations. Impairments may also occur in a range of cognitive and emotional functions. Successful emotion regulation, which has been identified as important in psychological adaptation to chronic illness, is associated with better perc...
Background:
Findings from physical disease resilience research may be used to develop approaches to reduce the burden of disease. However, there is no consensus on the definition and measurement of resilience in the context of physical disease.
Objective:
The aim was to summarize the range of definitions of physical disease resilience and the ap...
In the laboratory, studies have shown an inconsistent pattern of whether, and how, mood may affect cognitive functions indicating both mood-related enhancement as well as decline. Surprisingly, little is known about whether there are similar effects in everyday life. Hence, the present study aimed to investigate possible mood effects on memory and...
Abstract Efficient intention formation might improve prospective memory by reducing the need for resource-demanding strategic processes during the delayed performance interval. The present study set out to test this assumption and provides the first empirical assessment of whether imagining a future action improves prospective memory performance eq...
The present study examined age-by-mood interactions in prospective memory and the potential role of attentional control. Positive, negative, or neutral mood was induced in young and older adults. Subsequent time-based prospective memory performance was tested, incorporating a measure of online attentional control shifts between the ongoing and the...
Flow (being in the zone) is purported to have positive consequences in terms of affect and performance; however, there is no empirical evidence about these links in visual creativity. Positive affect often-but inconsistently-facilitates creativity, and both may be linked to experiencing flow. This study aimed to determine relationships between thes...
Theory of mind (ToM) refers broadly to our understanding of others' complex emotions and mental states. Deficits in ToM are widely regarded as one of the key defining features of the behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), which is unsurprising given the key role that frontal and temporal neural systems are considered to play in men...
The present study explored own-age biases in deception detection, investigating whether individuals were more likely to trust those in their own-age group. Younger and older participants were asked to detect deceit from videos of younger and older speakers, rating their confidence in each decision. Older participants showed an own-age bias: they we...
Background:
Most laboratory-based studies on prospective memory show a decline with increasing age. Theoretical explanations for age differences focus on the allocation of attentional resources to support prospective remembering. The recruitment of prospective memory target monitoring seems to be influenced by perceived task importance.
Objective...
Objectives:
Stroke can cause impairment in emotion perception, but the social consequences of these problems have not been explored to date. In a group of patients with stroke, this study investigated whether difficulties in emotion perception related to social participation and quality-of-life. It also assessed whether these relationships remaine...
Theory of mind, the ability to understand mental states, involves inferences about others' cognitive (cognitive theory of mind) and emotional (affective theory of mind) mental states. The current study explored the role of executive functions in developing affective theory of mind across adolescence. Affective theory of mind and three subcomponents...
Background:
The influence of white matter lesions on depressive symptoms in healthy ageing populations remains unclear. In this study, we examined the relationship between depressive symptoms and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) detected cerebrovascular disease in a normal population living independently in the community, and measured the influenc...
Age-related difficulties in understanding basic emotional signals are now well established, but less clear is how aging affects theory of mind (ToM), which refers to the understanding of more complex emotions and mental states. A meta-analysis of 23 datasets involving 1462 (790 younger and 672 older) participants was conducted in which six basic ty...
Episodic future thinking refers to mentally traveling forward in time to preexperience an event, and emerging research suggests that this is more difficult for older adults. The current study was designed to better understand the effect of aging on separate component processes of age differences in episodic future thinking. Young (n = 24) and older...
Age differences in social cognition between adolescents and young adults were investigated. Two large groups of adolescents and young adults were given tasks of theory of mind and emotion recognition. In addition, to control for possibly related basic cognitive development, working memory, speed of processing, and verbal ability were assessed. A st...
The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) defines participation as a person's performance in life situations, including the size of social networks, and satisfaction with social contacts. Stroke survivors are known to experience a reduction in the number of their social networks and contacts, which cannot be expla...
The present set of experiments aimed to investigate the effects of negative emotion on specific aspects of eyewitness recall and recognition performance. The experience of emotion was manipulated between subjects, with participants either viewing a crime scenario (a mugging) or a neutral scenario (a conversation). Eyewitness recall was categorized...
Participants diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), dementia and controls completed measures that required decoding emotions from point-light displays of bodily motion, and static images of facial affect. Both of these measures tap social cognitive processes that are considered critical for social competency. Consistent with prior literatu...
Prior research indicates that, in some circumstances, reminders may facilitate prospective remembering. However, it remains unclear whether this effect is dependent on the initiation source (self vs. external), whether it is moderated by task type (event vs. time based), or whether the provision of standardized reminders particularly benefits older...
Cognitive impairments in multiple sclerosis (MS) extend to tasks demanding prospective memory (PM): remembering to perform an intended act during ongoing activity. This study investigated whether emotional content influenced the effects of MS on PM, following evidence that emotional valence can influence other aspects of memory. Thirty participants...
BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: Social perception may be influenced by the extent to which individuals focus on global, rather than local, detail-based, processing of information about others. Here the authors investigated whether global processing biases relate to successful detection of actions and emotions from point-light biological motion (BM) stimu...
What are the fundamental mechanisms of decision making, processing speed, memory, and cognitive control? How do these give rise to individual differences, and how do they change as people age? How are these mechanisms implemented in neural functions, in particular the functions of the frontal lobe? How do they relate to the demands of everyday, 're...
There is consistent evidence that older adults have difficulties in perceiving emotions. However, emotion perception measures
to date have focused on one particular type of assessment: using standard photographs of facial expressions posing six basic
emotions. We argue that it is important in future research to explore adult age differences in unde...
There is evidence that some emotional expressions are characterized by diagnostic cues from individual face features. For example, an upturned mouth is indicative of happiness, whereas a furrowed brow is associated with anger. The current investigation explored whether motivating people to perceive stimuli in a local (i.e., feature-based) rather th...
Older adults often perform poorly on Theory of Mind (ToM) tests that require understanding of others' beliefs and intentions. The course and specificity of age changes in belief reasoning across the adult lifespan is unclear, as is the cause of the age effects. Cognitive and neuropsychological models predict that two types of processing might influ...
Research indicates that the most commonly held belief about deception is that people avert their gaze when lying. The present study assessed adult age-related differences in both the association between averted gaze and judgments of deception and the strength of the "deceiver stereotype."
In Study 1, younger and older adult participants were requir...
Emotional factors have been found to be an important influence on memory. The current study investigated the influence of emotional salience and age on a laboratory measure of prospective memory (PM); Virtual Week. Thirty young and 30 old adults completed Virtual Week, in which the emotional salience of the tasks at encoding was manipulated to be p...
Fluency tests are widely used in clinical settings to assess cognitive function. Fluency deficits In patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are generally attributed to deteriorated language storage. In contrast, patients with lesions to the frontal lobes (FL) of the brain are thought to have poor fluency due to executive deficits of retrieval. This...
Deficits in facial emotion processing are features of mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). These impairments are often dis-tressing for carers as well as patients. Such non-cognitive symptoms are often cited as a contributing reason for admis-sion into institutionalised care. The ability to interpret emotional cues is crucial to healthy psychological fun...
Efficient navigation of our social world depends on the generation, interpretation, and combination of social signals within different sensory systems. However, the influence of healthy adult aging on multisensory integration of emotional stimuli remains poorly explored. This article comprises 2 studies that directly address issues of age differenc...
Multiple sclerosis (MS) often results in demyelination of a network of frontal-subcortical tracts involved in processing emotional information. We investigated the effect of MS on the ability to identify emotional and nonemotional information from static and dynamic stimuli and determined whether difficulties in emotion perception related to qualit...
Previous research revealed age differences in following the gaze of others. To date, however, investigations have concentrated
on only young faces as target stimuli. The present study explored whether varying the age of target stimuli moderated gaze
following in younger and older adults. Overall, older participants showed less evidence of gaze foll...
Gaze direction influences younger adults' perception of emotional expressions, with direct gaze enhancing the perception of anger and joy, while averted gaze enhances the perception of fear. Age-related declines in emotion recognition and eye-gaze processing have been reported, indicating that there may be age-related changes in the ability to inte...