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Chapter Fourteen Choosing to Improve Performance
Abstract
Motivational levels are elevated when individuals believe that they have control over tasks and over behavioral outcomes. When individuals are permitted to make choices, their perception of control increases. In addition, by enhancing motivation, the exercise of choice facilitates performance on a variety of cognitive tasks. However, with advancing age or in the presence of a chronic disease such as diabetes, the effectiveness of choice in improving performance is attenuated. Despite these limitations on the effectiveness of choice, cognitive performance can still be improved significantly by the simple expedient of increasing the perception of control. Increased motivation appears to improve performance by suppressing interference from background stimuli. That is, decreased concentration on relevant target stimuli and increased interference from less relevant background stimuli are characteristics of the decline in cognitive function in the aged. This reflects a decrease in differentiation, a putative cognitive process that identifies target and background stimuli and appropriately proportions cognitive resources to them. When differentiation is effective, interference from background stimuli decreases. Because differentiation is an effort demanding process, its effectiveness depends upon an adequate level of motivation. Research indicates that the degree to which an individual differentiates predicts performance on a variety of cognitive tasks. Overall, these findings are hopeful in demonstrating that choice can serve as an effective motivational intervention for decreasing the rate of cognitive decline and improving the quality of life in vulnerable older individuals.
... Even for compulsory tasks, however, a small modicum of freedom can increase motivation and improve performance . Thus, individuals given choice over incidental features of a task often experience an elevated sense of personal control (Chan, Karbowski, Monty, & Perlmuter, 1986), greater arousal and motivation (Perlmuter, Scharff, Karsh, & Monty, 1980), and sharpened cognitive engagement (Perlmuter, Goldfinger, Sizer, & Monty, 1989), allowing them to outperform those not given choice (Perlmuter, Monty, & Kimble, 1971 ). Heightened perceptions of control due to choice also boost self-efficacy and confidence (Henry, 1994; Henry & Sniezek, 1993). ...
Incidental choice over the features of a task provides both control and personalization. Previous accounts of the tendency of choice to enhance task confidence have emphasized the importance of perceived control. The authors reexamined the enhancement effect to determine whether personalization is equally important. The results of two studies revealed that only choices reflecting personal preferences increased confidence in the task outcome (Study 1) and boosted performance-related self-esteem (Study 2). These findings point to the importance of self-identity expression for understanding the judgmental effects of choice.
Patients with non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) are likely to show selective cognitive decrements relative to age-matched controls—a relationship that has been shown in some but not all studies (cf., Mattlar, Falck, Ronnemaa & Hyyppa, 1985; Perlmuter et al., 1984). While such decrements in cognitive performance might be the result of any of several disease-related alterations in biologic function, a primary etiology may be impaired glucose control (Reaven & Thompson, 1988). The influence of glucose levels and regulation on learning and memory has been demonstrated in humans (Perlmuter, Tun, Sizer, McGlinchey & Nathan, 1987) and animals, diabetic and non-diabetic (Gold & Stone, 1988).
Conceptions of later adulthood have often portrayed a picture of the frail elderly, spiraling toward loneliness and loss (Lerner & Gignac, 1992). Furthermore, later life has generally been conceptualized as separate from earlier adult life in some qualitative manner, such that once you were young then you became middle aged, and then one day you were old, the proverbial riddle of the Sphinx. This chapter suggests that rather than a distinct developmental phase, later life is influenced by the caravan of resources that the person has obtained, protected, or lost throughout earlier life. This caravan is shaped by the lifetime experiences of the individual, the context of the family, and the framework of society for older adults. Who among us looks back at our earlier life and says, “That was a different person?” Rather, we see ourselves as having continuity with that earlier self. Our change is incremental. Yet, at the same time, we must acknowledge that changes do occur, and that these cumulatively affect us. So too, at any age, illness and death profoundly affect us and those around us, and as these changes are more prevalent with age, the caravan may move faster in our later years.
In non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, performance of complex cognitive tasks requiring the storage and retrieval of new information is poorer than in age-matched controls. By contrast, performance of less demanding tasks such as immediate memory and simple reaction time is essentially equivalent for NIDDM patients and controls. This pattern parallels the cognitive change observed with normal aging, in which age differences are minimal on less demanding immediate memory tasks but older adults perform more poorly than young adults on secondary or long-term memory tasks. Age-related changes in cognitive performance have been attributed to a reduction in processing resources or working memory capacity. Although the explanation for NIDDM-related deficits remains to be identified, reduced glucose control and elevated levels of triglycerides appear to play some role in cognitive impairment. Non-insulin-dependent diabetes is associated not only with elevated levels of depression, but with an increased frequency of self-reported memory problems. Moreover, elevated levels of depression are associated with various indicators of neuropathy and with significant reductions in self-regulated control of glucose at the time of medical office visits. Diabetic patients may perceive less control over their lives as a result of the many restrictions associated with the disease. When provided with the opportunity to exercise control, however, performance on many cognitive tasks can be improved in NIDDM as well as in age-matched controls. This suggests that by providing NIDDM patients with opportunities to exercise increased control over their lives it may be possible to enhance motivation and to increase the likelihood of the patient's adopting more effective self-regulatory behaviors.
A new technique for enhancing perceived control was described and tested. Briefly it is a technique that requires subjects to maintain awareness of making choices by focusing their attention on the rejected alternatives. Participants were required to monitor their behavior for three weeks focusing upon a single activity each day. One group focused on the same activity, repeatedly, another group focused on a different activity each day and finally, the experimental group focused on the rejected alternatives related to the one chosen activity each day. Results suggest that this mindfulness-inducing Rejection Behavioral Monitoring Technique is effective in enhancing control.
Investigated the effect of giving 120 undergraduates the opportunity to choose the response materials they wish to learn in a paired-associate task. A paradigm was used which manipulated the amount of choice allowed during the selection procedure and the locus or point at which choice took place. Results show that locus of choice was an extremely powerful variable and that if properly manipulated, choosing only 3 responses in a 12-item list elevated performance to a level near that of a 12-item list in which all responses were chosen. Motivational mechanisms are postulated to account for these findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Elderly (60 to 82 years) and young (18 to 25 years) subjects were tested on a visual task in which noise items were present but did not require processing to test the hypotheses that elderly persons have more difficulty ignoring irrelevent stimuli and suppressing response competition than do younger persons. Tachistoscopically presented displays contained a precued central target letter either alone or flanked by noise items that required (1) a response the same as, or (2) opposite to that required by the target letter, or (3) did not require a response in this task. No evidence was found to support differentially greater response slowing by the elderly due to the presence of irrelevant stimuli. Elderly persons showed significantly less effects of response competition, suggesting that the two groups processed the task information differently. The results suggest that age differences in effects of perceptual noise and response competition are not general phenomena, but depend upon the demand characteristics of the specific task.
Although a great deal of attention has been given to the study of learning and memory, relatively little has been paid to the problem of preparing tests for assessing memory functioning in clinical settings. Available memory batteries (e.g., the Wechsler Memory Scale) and tests for verbal and nonverbal learning and memory are reviewed. It is noted that, with the exception of the Wechsler Memory Scale, there are no widely known clinical tests of memory functioning, and the Wechsler Memory Scale does little more than establish norms for a set of tasks ordinarily included in a mental status exam. Critical issues are summarized, and implications for memory testing in clinical settings and for preparing future test batteries are listed. (3½ p ref)
The associations between depressive symptoms and functional disability and chronic conditions are examined in an elderly cohort of 2,806 noninstitutionalized men and women living in New Haven, Connecticut who were interviewed in 1982 as a part of the Yale Health and Aging Project. The aim is to explore several potential sources of invalidity in using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression scale (CES-D) to measure depressive symptoms in elderly populations. In particular, the authors are concerned with the possibility that prevalent physical illnesses and disabilities may cause the older person to report many somatic complaints, a major component of most measures of depressive symptomatology, and thereby inflate his or her CES-D score. Mean CES-D scores are 4.86 for those without any disabilities and range to 13.51 for those with major functional disabilities. However, physical disability is significantly associated with virtually every item on the CES-D scale not just those somatically-oriented items. The addition of functional disability to a multivariate model including age subfactor analysis of responses from this elderly sample produces results almost identical to those reported by earlier investigators who studied younger and middle-aged adults. The authors conclude that physical disabilities among the elderly do not appear to be a major threat to the validity of the CES-D scale and that the strong associations between physical and mental health should be rigorously investigated.
Groups of old people were impaired, relative to young adults, on a test of negative transfer involving lists of paired-associate words. Susceptibility to interference effects were greater in old people living in institutions than in old people living in their own homes. The effects of varying contextual cues on performance on this task were also assessed. All participants, regardless of age, benefitted from manipulations that were intrinsic to the task (e.g., relatedness of paired associates), but only the institutionalized aged responded to extrinsic contextual manipulations (e.g., environmental changes). In general, the performance of institutionalized old people resembled that of brain-damaged amnesic patients tested under similar conditions; old people living at home generally behaved more like normal, young people. The results were discussed in terms of specific age differences in cognitive function, declining brain function, and possible selective effects of institutionalization.
This experiment tested the hypothesis that due to the phenomenon of preservative consolidation, a pattern perceived under high arousal should show stronger permanent memory and weaker immediate memory than a pattern accompanied by low arousal. While recording skin resistance as a measure of arsousal, 48 Ss were presented 8 paired associates for learning. The Ss were tested at various time intervals: 2 min., 20 min., 45 min., 1 day, and 1 wk. The results confirmed the hypothesis (p = .001). Paired associates learned under low arousal exhibited high immediate recall value and rapid forgetting. High arousal paired associates exhibited a marked reminiscence effect, that is, low immediate recall and hgh permanent memory.
Conducted 2 studies with 99 nursing home residents (mean age ranges 76.2-80.7 yrs) to determine whether memory could be improved. This was accomplished by increasing the cognitive demand of the environment and then varying the extent to which Ss were motivated to attend to and remember these environmental factors. In Study 1, motivation to practice recommended cognitive activities was manipulated by varying the degree of reciprocal self-disclosure offered by interviewers in a series of dyadic interactions. In Study 2, motivation to practice recommended cognitive activities was manipulated by varying whether positive outcomes were contingent on attending to and remembering these activities, which increased in demand over time. In both studies, engaging in cognitive activity resulted in improvement on standard short-term memory tests, including probe recall and pattern recall, as well as in improvement on nurses' ratings of alertness, mental activity, and social adjustment for experimental groups relative to controls. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
It is argued that memory for events should depend on the ability to recall their attributes. Two experiments suggest that this is so for the attribute of spatial location. When words presented in spatial arrays were later re-presented in a joint test of recognition memory and location recall, it was found that the surer one's recognition, the greater the accuracy of location recall. Instructions to attend to a word's location resulted in poorer recognition memory and marginally poorer location recall than were obtained when location was "incidentally" learned. Finally, when words were presented in color as well as in space, recognition memory was best when both attributes were recalled, was better when only location, was recalled than when only color was recalled, and was poorest when neither attribute was recalled.
Permitting subjects to choose materials to be learned on a task enhances performance on that task. These results support the idea that choice increases the learner's perception of control, thereby enhancing motivation and performance. The purpose of the present experiments was to determine whether choosing responses to be learned on a paired-associate task would also benefit performance on a reaction-time task. Half of the subjects selected their responses to be learned on a paired-associate task while the remaining subjects were assigned responses. In one experiment, subjects then performed both the PA and RT tasks simultaneously, while in the second experiment the RT task was performed following the choice/force procedure. Providing the learner with the opportunity to choose produced a generalized increase in motivation, which resulted in significantly faster responding on the nonchosen RT task. Also discussed are the limitations of the effects of perceived control.
The purpose of this experiment was to examine the effects of choice and environmental control on the development of the perception of control. The results showed that the perception of control develops from an opportunity to make choices. More deliberate (slower) decisions resulted in an increase in the perception of control, and these perceptual effects generalized to a dice-throwing task over which no choice was possible. A model was examined which assumes that subjects monitor their own behavior with the result that more thoughtful decisions lead subjects to infer higher levels of control.
Age differences in the processing of relevant stimuli were examined under two levels of irrelevant stimulation. The relevant
stimuli were the right words of a multiple-item recognition learning task; the two levels of irrelevant stimulation were provided
by the pairing of one wrong word (two-alternative items) versus three wrong words (four-alternative items) with each right
word. Elderly subjects were inferior to young adults in the learning of four-alternative items, but not in the learning of
two-alternative items. This finding supports the hypothesis, derived from previous research on perceptual tasks, that elderly
adults direct greater amounts of attention to irrelevant stimuli than do young adults, thus reducing the amount of processing
available for the accompanying relevant stimuli. However, despite their presumed greater attention to irrelevant stimuli,
elderly subjects recognized fewer individual wrong words on a subsequent memory test than did young adults. This age-related
effect was interpreted in terms of depth of processing theory.
Presents evidence pertaining to the hypothesis that aging is characterized by a decrement in the ability to suppress irrelevant stimuli (perceptual noise). Although studies in the various sensory modalities generally support a perceptual noise hypothesis of aging, most of the evidence is marred by serious structural weaknesses. It is concluded that the heuristic value of such a unifying hypothesis seems, however, to justify further investigation aimed at correcting these flaws. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
Non-insulin dependent diabetes in older adults is associated with elevated depression and a greater decline in certain aspects of cognitive functioning than is found with normal aging. This study sought to determine whether diabetics report more memory complaints in carrying out their daily activities, and if memory self-assessments are reflective of performance on laboratory tasks. Middle-aged (55-64 years) and old (65-74 years) diabetics and non-diabetic control subjects were studied. Results showed that both diabetes and increased age were associated with poorer performance on some cognitive tests as well as with more self-reported memory problems. When depression levels were statistically controlled, the diabetes variable was no longer a significant predictor of memory complaints. The usefulness of self-assessments as an adjunct to more objective cognitive test measures was discussed.
This study investigated the effects of spatial contiguity of coding key and coding row and interference from irrelevant stimuli
on the coding performance of young and older adults. The young coded faster than older adults, and they were unaffected by
the presence of irrelevant stimuli. The old group was significantly slower when irrelevant rows of coding material were present,
regardless of the spatial placement of such stimuli. Interference may partially explain the difficulty older adults experience
on coding tasks, but it has a similar effect on sequential psychomotor task performance other than coding. Spatial contiguity
of coding key and coding row did not influence the performance of either age group. Both groups improved with practice over
trials, but the old group improved to a greater degree, particularly on the initial trials
A cross-sectional study was conducted to determine whether normal, age-related declines in cognitive function are accelerated in non-insulin-dependent (type II) diabetes mellitus. Study participants ranged in age from 55 to 74 years. Results indicate that cognitive function is inferior in the patients with type II diabetes compared with a comparably aged, nondiabetic control group. On the basis of a series of cognitive tests, it appears that the cognitive impairment is due to a deficiency in memory retrieval rather than to an attentional or encoding deficit. Cognitive performance is poorer in diabetic patients with peripheral neuropathy or elevated hemoglobin A1c levels. The apparent cognitive impairment in aging patients with type II diabetes may complicate adherence to medical regimens.
In the present study, contextual detail was manipulated in a stimulus set by reproducing cartoon pictures intact or with much
of the background obliterated. Young and older adults were presented cartoon slides both with and without contextual detail
for study. During recognition, presence or absence of background was crossed factorially with its presence or absence during
encoding, and participants indicated whether they recognized the cartoon. Analysis of d' scores indicated that old and young adults evidenced encoding specificity effects of comparable magnitude. Additionally,
young people recognized pictures with contextual detail better than pictures without detail, whereas the reverse appeared
to be true for older individuals. The implications of these findings with respect to those of craik and simon are discussed.
College students (n = 36) and elderly persons (n = 28 females, eight males; 60–83 years old) were compared on an immediate-memory task involving an outstanding item in the center of the array. The college students remembered the outstanding item well, the elderly did not. Both groups displayed better overall performance for the list containing the outstanding item. The results are discussed in terms of differences in processing strategies.
College students and elderly adults were presented with drawings for study that were placed on the left or right side of a
photographic slide. Persons in the items-only condition studied only the target drawings, whereas persons in the items-position
condition studied both the target drawing and its location to determine whether intentionality affected picture recognition
or position recall. Half of the drawings were presented with an irrelevant adjacent drawing to assess the effect of presenting
the target item relative to another drawing. The principal finding was that, although special memory was well above chance,
the hasher and zacks' criteria for automatic processing of this dimension were not met. Specifically, an agerelated decline
in spatial memory was observed, and intentionality to learn position affected item recognition and position recall. It was
also found that older persons' memory for position was enhanced by the irrelevant drawings. Results are discussed primarily
in terms of the hasher and zacks model of automatic processing and possible encoding strategies utilized by the elderly.
This study addresses several major methodologic issues in the assessment of depressive illness among the elderly family practice living in the community. These include the selection of screening locale, the definition of depression in the elderly, and the evaluation of age trends within this group. The family physician's office is viewed as the optimal screening locale; this facility serves as the chief link between the elderly patient and the community health care system, for psychologic as well as physical complaints. In the definition of depression, a type of depressive illness particularly affecting the elderly may be distinguished from a syndrome more characteristic of depression in the population at large. Emphasis is laid on viewing aging as an evolving process rather than as a steady state. A pilot study of 166 chronically ill family practice patients living in the community was conducted. A large proportion of them, all without previously diagnosed psychiatric impairment, had elevated depression scores according to the Zung Depression Status Inventory. Distinct symptom clusters characteristic of depression in the aged were identified. The data also suggested a systematic age trend, with different peaks of depression for men and women within the elderly age range.
Forty-five elderly subjects performed a modified paired-associate learning task under two conditions designed to enhance their perception of control. Subjects in enhanced control conditions chose their own response items ("choice" subjects) or were allowed to manually control response interval duration ("self-paced"). Yoked controls learned the same items selected by choice subjects, or experienced pacing conditions under which they were allowed comparable amounts of response time. The design was an incomplete 2 x 3 x 6 factorial with two types of item selection (choice vs. force), three types of pacing (self-paced, yoked item-by-item, yoke by trial median time), and six trials. There was no "choice" group in the "item yoked" pacing condition. As predicted, subjects experiencing either or both of the control-enhancing conditions performed better than yoked controls. Experiencing both item choice and self-pacing did not result in performance which was significantly better than that of subjects experiencing only one or the other. Results are discussed in light of previous work with young persons, and recommendations are offered to researchers.
Two experiments examined adult age differences in the effects of perceptual grouping on attentional performance. In a search
task, 48 young, middle-aged, and elderly subjects sorted cards based on the orientation of a target figure. The interfering
effects of irrelevant information which did or did not contrast with the target in orientation were examined. The position
of targets varied from one card to the next. Elderly, but not young or middle-aged subjects were slowed by the presence of
contrasting irrelevant information. All three age groups were slowed by the presence of similar irrelevant information, but
the elderly were slowed more than the young adults. A similar procedure was used in a second experiment, but the position
of targets within each deck did not vary from one card to the next. No age group was slowed by the presence of contrasting
irrelevant information,and only the elderly were slowed by the presence of similar irrelevant information. The importance
of perceptual grouping in accounting for adult agedifferences in attentional processes was discussed.