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Cognition and beyond: Intersections of personality traits and language
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Can language use reflect personality style? Studies examined the reliability, factor structure, and validity of written language using a word-based, computerized text analysis program. Daily diaries from 15 substance abuse inpatients, daily writing assignments from 35 students, and journal abstracts from 40 social psychologists demonstrated good internal consistency for over 36 language dimensions. Analyses of the best 15 language dimensions from essays by 838 students yielded 4 factors that replicated across written samples from another 381 students. Finally, linguistic profiles from writing samples were compared with Thematic Apperception Test coding, self-reports, and behavioral measures from 79 students and with self-reports of a 5-factor measure and health markers from more than 1,200 students. Despite modest effect sizes, the data suggest that linguistic style is an independent and meaningful way of exploring personality.
Based on evidence for age-related impairments in flexible, goal-directed control, the formation of habits has been recognized as an opportune route for behavioural adjustment that promotes resilience among older adults. The present study set out to examine how individual differences in quality of life (QoL) and mental well-being (MWB) in older adults (N = 1116, 55 – 92 years old) relate to the inclination to engage in strategic planning and lifestyle regularity. Importantly, the beneficial effects of these two habit predisposing factors on MWB and QoL were found to be mediated by conscientiousness, a personality trait characterized by a tendency to be goal-oriented, organized, responsible and disciplined, and to plan for the future. These results emphasize the benefits of conscientiousness for resilience in later life and suggest that both habit-predisposing factors may offer promising and concrete target points to elicit more conscientious behaviour, and thereby support QoL and MWB. Longitudinal and experimental research may help to establish the flow of causality in the intriguing dynamics between these variables.
Language is central to the interactional nature of the social life within which it is situated. To react or respond in a particular situation, we must be able to recognize the social situation. Growing evidence has demonstrated the negative impact of perceived loneliness on late-life executive functions. Yet little is known about how social factors impact language processing for older people. The current study aims to fill this gap, first by assessing age-related changes in lexical processing during Chinese word reading, second, by examining whether older adults’ individual differences, such as processing speed and verbal abilities, modulate meaning retrieval and, third, by investigating whether perceived loneliness can hinder word reading. The use of compound words in Chinese enables significant sublexical ambiguity, requiring varying executive load during word recognition: when a word’s constituent characters carry multiple meanings, readers must consider the meaning contributions of both constituent characters and use top-down word information to determine the most accurate meaning of the ambiguous character, a process termed “sublexical ambiguity resolution.” In this study, adults read real Chinese words (including both sublexically ambiguous and unambiguous words) and pseudowords, and they were asked to make lexical decisions. Older adults exhibited greater lexicality effects (i.e., real words were easier to be identified than pseudowords) and similar sublexical ambiguity effects compared with young adults. Among older participants, processing speed could account for their ability to differentiate between words and pseudowords. In contrast, the level of perceived loneliness modulated the efficacy of sublexical ambiguity resolution: the participants with higher perceived loneliness displayed a greater sublexical ambiguity disadvantage effect. These results indicate that perceived loneliness may affect the use of contextual information in meaning retrieval during reading. The findings provide an important link between social connections and language processing.
Personality neuroscience is the study of persistent psychological individual differences, typically in the general population, using neuroscientific methods. It has the potential to shed light on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying individual differences and their manifestation in ongoing behavior and experience. The field was inaugurated many decades ago, yet has only really gained momentum in the last two, as suitable technologies have become widely available. Personality neuroscience employs a broad range of methods, including molecular genetics, pharmacological assays or manipulations, electroencephalography, and various neuroimaging modalities, such as magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography. Although exciting progress is being made in this young field, much remains unknown. In this brief review, we discuss discoveries that have been made, methodological challenges and advances, and important questions that remain to be answered. We also discuss best practices for personality neuroscience research and promising future directions for the field.
Neuroticism has been associated with individual differences across multiple cognitive functions. Yet, the literature on its specific association with executive functions (EF) in older adults is scarce, especially using longitudinal designs. To disentangle the specific influence of neuroticism on EF and on coarse cognitive functioning in old adulthood, respectively, we examined the relationship between neuroticism, the Trail Making Test (TMT) and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) in a 6-year longitudinal study using Bayesian analyses. Data of 768 older adults (Mage = 73.51 years at Wave 1) were included in a cross-lagged analysis. Results showed no cross-sectional link between neuroticism and TMT performance at Wave 1 and no longitudinal link between neuroticism at Wave 1 and MMSE at Wave 2. However, neuroticism at Wave 1 predicted TMT performance at Wave 2, indicating that the more neurotic participants were, the lower they performed on the TMT six years later. Additional analyses showed that this relation was fully mediated by participants’ perceived stress. Our results suggest that the more neurotic older adults are the more stress they may perceive six years later, which in turn negatively relates to their EF. In sum, this study demonstrates that neuroticism may lead to lower EF in older age across six years. It further suggests older adults’ perceived stress as mediator, thereby providing novel insights into the mechanisms underlying this relation. Possible intervention approaches to counter these effects are discussed.
Given that adolescents often experience fundamental changes in social relationships, they are considered to be especially prone to loneliness. Meanwhile, theory and research highlight that both extraversion and neuroticism are closely intertwined with individual differences in loneliness. Extant research has explored the linear main effects of these personality traits, yet potential non-linear associations (e.g., exponential effects) and the potential interplay of extraversion and neuroticism (e.g., mutual reinforcement effects) remain unknown. We addressed these open questions using cross-sectional and one-year longitudinal data from two adolescent samples (overall N = 583, Mage = 17.57, 60.55% girls) and an information-theoretic approach combined with polynomial regression. Analyses showed little evidence for interaction effects but revealed non-linear effects in addition to the main effects of extraversion and neuroticism on loneliness. For example, the positive cross-sectional association between neuroticism and loneliness was stronger at higher neuroticism levels (i.e., exponential effect). Results differed across loneliness facets in that both traits predicted emotional loneliness, but only extraversion predicted social loneliness. Longitudinal analyses showed that loneliness changes were mainly related to neuroticism. We discuss results in the light of sample differences, elaborate on the importance to differentiate between emotional versus social aspects of loneliness, and outline implications for adolescent development.
The lexical system of Hong Kong Cantonese has been heavily shaped by the local trilingual environment. The development of cultural- and language-specific norms for Hong Kong Cantonese is fundamental for understanding how the speaker population organize semantic memory, how they utilize their semantic resources, and what information processing strategies they use for the retrieval of semantic knowledge. This study presents a normative database of 72 lexical categories in Hong Kong Cantonese produced by native speakers in a category exemplar production task. Exemplars are enlisted under a category label, along with the instance probabilities and word familiarity scores. Possible English equivalents are given to the exemplars for the convenience of non-HKC speaker researchers. Statistics on categories were further extracted to capture the heterogeneity of the categories: the total number of valid exemplars, the number of exemplars covering 90% of the occurrence and the probabilities of the most frequent exemplars in each category. The database offers a direct lexical sketch of the vocabulary of modern Hong Kong Cantonese in a categorical structure. The category-exemplar lists and the comparative statistics together lay the foundations for further investigations on the Hong Kong Cantonese speaking population from multiple disciplines, such as the structure of semantic knowledge, the time-course of knowledge access, and the processing strategies of young adults. Results of this norm can be also used as a benchmark for other age groups. The database can serve as a crucial resource for establishing initial screening tests to assess the cognitive and psychological functioning of the Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong population in both educational and clinical settings. In sum, this normative study provides a fundamental resource for future studies on language processing mechanisms of Hong Kong Cantonese speaking population, as well as language studies and other cross-language/culture studies on Hong Kong Cantonese.
In the last two decades, empirical evidence has shown that personality traits could be related to the characteristics of written language. This study describes a meta-analysis that synthesizes 23 independent estimates of the correlations between the Big Five major personality traits, and some computationally obtained indicators from written language. The results show significant combined estimates of the correlations, albeit small to moderate according to Cohen's conventions to interpret effect sizes, for the five traits (between r = 0.26 for agreeableness and neuroticism, and 0.30 for openness). These estimates are moderated by the type of information in the texts, the use of prediction mechanisms, and the source of publication of the primary studies. Generally, the same effective moderators operate for the five traits. It is concluded that written language analyzed through computational methods could be used to extract relevant information of personality. But further research is still needed to consider it as predictive or explanatory tool for individual differences.
Research suggests that listeners’ comprehension of spoken language is concurrently affected by linguistic and non-linguistic factors, including individual difference factors. However, there is no systematic research on whether general personality traits affect language processing. We correlated 88 native English-speaking participants’ Big-5 traits with their pupillary responses to spoken sentences that included grammatical errors, "He frequently have burgers for dinner"; semantic anomalies, "Dogs sometimes chase teas"; and statements incongruent with gender stereotyped expectations, such as "I sometimes buy my bras at Hudson's Bay", spoken by a male speaker. Generalized additive mixed models showed that the listener's Openness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism traits modulated resource allocation to the three different types of unexpected stimuli. No personality trait affected changes in pupil size across the board: less open participants showed greater pupil dilation when processing sentences with grammatical errors; and more introverted listeners showed greater pupil dilation in response to both semantic anomalies and socio-cultural clashes. Our study is the first one demonstrating that personality traits systematically modulate listeners’ online language processing. Our results suggest that individuals with different personality profiles exhibit different patterns of the allocation of cognitive resources during real-time language comprehension.
Individual differences in human intelligence, as assessed using cognitive test scores, have a well-replicated, hierarchical phenotypic covariance structure. They are substantially stable across the life course, and are predictive of educational, social, and health outcomes. From this solid phenotypic foundation and importance for life, comes an interest in the environmental, social, and genetic aetiologies of intelligence, and in the foundations of intelligence differences in brain structure and functioning. Here, we summarise and critique the last 10 years or so of molecular genetic (DNA-based) research on intelligence, including the discovery of genetic loci associated with intelligence, DNA-based heritability, and intelligence’s genetic correlations with other traits. We summarise new brain imaging-intelligence findings, including whole-brain associations and grey and white matter associations. We summarise regional brain imaging associations with intelligence and interpret these with respect to theoretical accounts. We address research that combines genetics and brain imaging in studying intelligence differences. There are new, though modest, associations in all these areas, and mechanistic accounts are lacking. We attempt to identify growing points that might contribute toward a more integrated ‘systems biology’ account of some of the between-individual differences in intelligence.
Recent research has investigated how personality trait differences influence the processing of emotion conveyed by pictures, but limited research has examined the emotion conveyed by words. The present study investigated whether extraversion (extroverts vs. introverts) and neuroticism (high neurotics vs. low neurotics) influence the processing of positive, neutral, and negative words that were matched for arousal. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded from healthy participants while they performed a lexical decision task. We found that personality traits influenced emotional word recognition at N400 (300-450 ms) and LPC (450-800 ms). At the earlier (N400) stage, the more extraverted and neurotic a participant was, the more reduced the N400s for the positive words relative to neutral words were. This suggests that the extroverts and high neurotics (i.e., high impulsivity) identified positive content in words during lexical feature retrieval, which facilitated such retrieval. At the later (LPC) stage, both the introverts and high neurotics (i.e., high anxiety) showed greater LPCs to negative than neutral words, indicating their sustained attention and elaborative processing of negative information. These results suggest that extraversion and neuroticism collectively influence different stages of emotional word recognition in a way that is consistent with Gray’s biopsychological theory of personality.
Individual differences in trait levels of openness to experience and creativity have been theoretically linked to dopamine function. However, empirical evidence for this assumption is scarce, especially for causal connections. The present study aims to directly assess the influence of dopamine activity on the established association between openness to experience and divergent thinking (i.e., an index of creativity). We hypothesized that manipulating dopamine activity alters the relationship between self-reported openness to experience and ideational fluency and flexibility. In a placebo-controlled between-subjects design, 193 healthy male volunteers completed four divergent thinking tasks after they received either the dopamine-receptor blocker sulpiride (200 mg) or a placebo. The data revealed an interaction such that openness to experience was more positively associated with divergent thinking in the dopamine blocker group ( r = 0.304) than in the placebo group ( r = −0.002). Specifically, highly open individuals in the dopamine blocker group reached the highest divergent thinking scores. Thus, sulpiride administration selectively affected divergent thinking as a function of trait levels of openness to experience. Although somewhat limited by the unexpected absence of the association between openness to experience and divergent thinking in the placebo group, the present study provides novel evidence for an association between dopamine activity and both openness to experience and divergent thinking.
We examined the role of personality and health as time-invariant and time-varying predictors of changes in different cognitive domains based on data from the Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Study on Adult Development. Our sample consisted of 500 individuals born between 1930 and 1932 (baseline age: M = 62.87 years, SD = 0.89 years) who were assessed up to 4 times over an interval of up to 20 years. Cognitive abilities were measured by multiple well-established tests representing crystallized intelligence, fluid intelligence, and information processing speed. Because of poor psychometric properties of openness in our sample, only 4 of the Big Five personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) were used. Based on in-depth medical examinations, physicians rated study participants' health. When considered as time-invariant predictors, lower baseline neuroticism and extraversion scores were associated with better baseline performance on the crystallized and fluid ability tests. Higher initial extraversion was associated with less steep decline in information processing speed. Worse baseline physician health was associated with lower baseline scores on fluid abilities and information processing speed. Moreover, worse initial health was associated with steeper decline in crystallized and fluid abilities. From a time-varying perspective, crystallized abilities were lower on measurement occasions when individuals revealed poorer health. Our findings suggest that late-life cognitive abilities are differentially related with personality and health. Overall, personality characteristics are associated with late-life cognitive abilities, but less so from a time-varying perspective. They also seem to be of limited importance for the prediction of long-term change in cognitive abilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Individuals experience loneliness when they perceive a deficiency in the quality or quantity of their social relationships. In the present meta-analysis, we compiled data from 75 longitudinal studies conducted in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America (N = 83, 679) to examine the rank-order and mean-level development of loneliness across the life span. Data were analyzed using two- and three-level meta-analyses and generalized additive mixed models. The results indicate that the rank order of loneliness is as stable as the rank order of personality traits and follows an inverted U-shaped trajectory across the life span. Regarding mean-level development, loneliness was found to decrease throughout childhood and to remain essentially stable from adolescence to oldest old age. Thus, in contrast to other personality characteristics, changes in loneliness are not generally related to age. Implications for theory are discussed.
The objective of this article is to review and integrate interrelated areas of research on personality and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Prospective studies indicate that individuals who score higher on conscientiousness (more responsible and self-disciplined) and lower on neuroticism (less anxious and vulnerable to stress) have a reduced risk of developing dementia, even in the presence of AD neuropathology. Personality is also related to measures of cognitive performance and cognitive decline, with effect sizes similar to those of other clinical, lifestyle, and behavioral risk factors. These associations are unlikely to be due to reverse causality: Long-term prospective data indicate that there are no changes in personality that are an early sign of the disease during the preclinical phase of AD. With the onset and progression of dementia, however, there are large changes in personality that are reported consistently by caregivers in retrospective studies and are consistent with the clinical criteria for the diagnosis of dementia. The review also discusses potential mechanisms of the observed associations and emphasizes the need for prospective studies to elucidate the interplay of personality traits with AD neuropathology (amyloid and tau biomarkers) in modulating the risk and timing of onset of clinical dementia. The article concludes with the implications of personality research for identifying those at greater risk of AD and the potential of personality-tailored interventions aimed at the prevention and treatment of AD.
Objective: Loneliness is an aversive response to a discrepancy between desired and actual social relationships and correlates with personality. We investigate the relationship of loneliness and personality in twin‐family and molecular genetic data.
Method: Phenotypic correlations between loneliness and the Big Five personality traits were estimated in 29,625 adults, and in a group with genome‐wide genotype data (N=4,222), genetic correlations were obtained. We explored whether genetic correlations may reflect causal relationships by investigating within monozygotic twin‐pair differences (Npairs=2,662), by longitudinal within‐subject changes in personality and loneliness (N=4,260‐9,238 longitudinal comparisons), and by longitudinal cross‐lagged panel analyses (N=15,628). Finally, we tested whether genetic correlations were due to cross‐trait assortative mating (Nspouse‐pairs=4,436).
Results: The strongest correlations with loneliness were observed for neuroticism (r=.55) and extraversion (r=‐.33). Only neuroticism showed a high correlation with loneliness independent of other personality traits (r=.50), so follow‐up analyses focused on neuroticism. The genetic correlation between loneliness and neuroticism from genotyped variants was .71; a significant reciprocal causal relationship and non‐significant cross‐trait assortative mating imply that this is at least partly due to mediated pleiotropy.
Conclusion: We show that the relationship between loneliness and personality is largely explained by its relationship with neuroticism, which is substantially genetic in nature. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Alterations in brain structure are viewed as neurobiological indicators which are closely tied to cognitive changes in healthy human aging. The current study used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) tractography to investigate the relationship between age, brain variation in white matter (WM) integrity, and cognitive function. Sixteen younger adults (aged 20–28 years) and 18 healthy older adults (aged 60–75 years) underwent DTI scanning and a standardized battery of neuropsychological measures. Behaviorally, older adults exhibited poorer performance on multiple cognitive measures compared to younger adults. At the neural level, the effects of aging on theWM integrity were evident within interhemispheric (the anterior portion of corpus callosum) and transverse (the right uncinate fasciculus) fibers of the frontal regions, and the cingulum-angular fibers. Our correlation results showed that age-related WM differentially influenced cognitive function, with increased fractional anisotropy values in both the anterior corpus callosum and the right cingulum/angular fibers positively correlated with performance on the visuospatial task in older adults. Moreover, mediation analysis further revealed that the WM tract integrity of the frontal interhemspheric fibers was a significant mediator of age–visuospatial performance relation in older adults, but not in younger adults. These findings support the vulnerability of the frontal WM fibers to normal aging and push forward our understanding of cognitive aging by providing a more integrative view of the neural basis of linkages among aging, cognition, and brain.
We examined the life span development of openness to experience and tested whether change in this personality trait was associated with change in cultural activity, such as attending the opera or visiting museums. Data came from the Dutch Longitudinal Internet Study for the Social Sciences panel, which includes 5 personality assessments across a 7-year period of a nationally representative sample of 7,353 individuals, aged 16 to 95 years. Latent growth curve analyses indicated that on average, openness remained relatively stable in emerging adulthood before declining in midlife and old age. At each stage of life, there were significant individual differences in openness development, and changes in openness were correlated with changes in cultural activity. Autoregressive cross-lagged analyses indicated that increases in cultural activity precipitated increases in openness, and vice versa. These culture-openness transactions held across different age and education groups and when controlling for household income. We found less consistent codevelopmental associations between cultural activity and the other Big Five traits. We discuss the implications of these results for personality development theory and the role of cultural investment in personality trait change.
Smith (2016) provided a valuable review on healthy cognitive aging, addressing potential risk factors for dementia, as well as multiple mechanisms for preventing dementia. However, missing in this discussion was an acknowledgment of the potential that personality may play in shaping trajectories of cognitive aging. The current response provides a brief review of the ever accruing evidence that our dispositional traits and self-efficacy beliefs can predict trajectories of cognitive aging, as well as the mechanisms that produce these trajectories, including participants’ likelihood to adhere to intervention efforts to reduce cognitive decline. We conclude by presenting recommendations for how cognitive aging researchers and practitioners can integrate personality science into their work.
The current study examines visual word recognition in a large sample (N = 148) across the adult life span and across a large set of stimuli (N = 1,187) in three different lexical processing tasks (pronunciation, lexical decision, and animacy judgment). Although the focus of the present study is on the influence of word frequency, a diverse set of other variables are examined as the word recognition system ages and acquires more experience with language. Computational models and conceptual theories of visual word recognition and aging make differing predictions for age-related changes in the system. However, these have been difficult to assess because prior studies have produced inconsistent results, possibly because of sample differences, analytic procedures, and/or task-specific processes. The current study confronts these potential differences by using 3 different tasks, treating age and word variables as continuous, and exploring the influence of individual differences such as vocabulary, vision, and working memory. The primary finding is remarkable stability in the influence of a diverse set of variables on visual word recognition across the adult age spectrum. This pattern is discussed in reference to previous inconsistent findings in the literature and implications for current models of visual word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record
Objective:
To examine reciprocal relations of loneliness and cognitive function in older adults.
Methods:
Data were analyzed from 8382 men and women, age 65 and older, participating in the US Health and Retirement Study from 1998 to 2010. Participants underwent biennial assessments of loneliness and depression (classified as no, low or high depression) determined by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale (8-item version), cognition (a derived memory score based on a word list memory task and proxy-rated memory and global cognitive function), health status and social and demographic characteristics from 1998 to 2010. We used repeated measures analysis to examine the reciprocal relations of loneliness and cognitive function in separate models controlling sequentially and cumulatively for socio-demographic factors, social network, health conditions and depression.
Results:
Loneliness at baseline predicted accelerated cognitive decline over 12 years independent of baseline socio-demographic factors, social network, health conditions and depression (β = -0.2, p = 0.002). After adjustment for depression interacting with time, both low and high depression categories were related to faster cognitive decline and the estimated effect of loneliness became marginally significant. Reciprocally, poorer cognition at baseline was associated with greater odds of loneliness over time in adjusted analyses (OR 1.3, 95% CI (1.1-1.5) p = 0.005), but not when controlling for baseline depression. Furthermore, cognition did not predict change in loneliness over time.
Conclusion:
Examining longitudinal data across a broad range of cognitive abilities, loneliness and depressive symptoms appear to be related risk factors for worsening cognition but low cognitive function does not lead to worsening loneliness over time.
Past work on emotion processing has focused solely on detecting emotions, and ignored questions such as ‘who is feeling the emotion (the experiencer)?’ and ‘towards whom is the emotion directed (the stimulus)?’. We automatically compile a large dataset of tweets pertaining to the 2012 US presidential elections, and annotate it not only for emotion but also for the experiencer and the stimulus. We then develop a classifier for detecting emotion that obtains an accuracy of 56.84 on an eight-way classification task. Finally, we show how the stimulus identification task can also be framed as a classification task, obtaining an F-score of 58.30.
Personality psychology seeks both to understand how individuals differ from one another in behavior, motivation, emotion, and cognition and to explain the causes of those differences. The goal of personality neuroscience is to identify the underlying sources of personality traits in neurobiological systems. This chapter reviews neuroscience research on the traits of the Five-Factor Model (the Big Five: Extraversion, Neuroticism, Openness/Intellect, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness). The review emphasizes the importance of theoretically informed neuroscience by framing results in light of a theory of the psychological functions underlying each of the Big Five. The chapter additionally reviews the various neuroscientific methods available for personality research and highlights pitfalls and best practices in personality neuroscience.
A variety of approaches have been recently proposed to automatically infer users’ personality from their user generated content in social media. Approaches differ in terms of the machine learning algorithms and the feature sets used, type of utilized footprint, and the social media environment used to collect the data. In this paper, we perform a comparative analysis of state-of-the-art computational personality recognition methods on a varied set of social media ground truth data from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. We answer three questions: (1) Should personality prediction be treated as a multi-label prediction task (i.e., all personality traits of a given user are predicted at once), or should each trait be identified separately? (2) Which predictive features work well across different on-line environments? and (3) What is the decay in accuracy when porting models trained in one social media environment to another?
Objectives
Five-Factor Model personality traits are associated consistently with cognition. Inflammation has been hypothesized as a biological pathway in this association, but this assumption has yet to be tested. The present study tested inflammatory markers as mediators between personality traits and cognition.
Methods
Participants were from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS; N= 4,364; 60% women; Mean age= 64.48 years, SD= 8.79). Personality traits and demographic factors were assessed in 2010/2012. Data on inflammatory markers [High Sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP), Interleukin-6 (IL-6), soluble tumor necrosis factor 1 (sTNFR1), Interleukin-10 (IL-10), Interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra), and transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1] were obtained in 2016 from the HRS Venuous Blood Study. Cognition was assessed in 2020 using the modified Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status (TICSm).
Results
Higher neuroticism was related to lower cognition at follow-up, whereas higher extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were associated with better cognition. Higher extraversion and higher conscientiousness were related to lower hsCRP, IL-6, IL-10, IL-1Ra, and sTNFR1, and higher openness was associated with lower IL-10, IL-1Ra, and sTNFR1 and to higher sTGF-β1. Lower sTNFR1 partially mediated the associations between conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness and cognition at follow-up, explaining an estimated 4 to 12% of these associations. The mediating role of sTNFR1 persisted when physical activity and depressive symptoms were included as additional mediators.
Conclusion
The present study provides new evidence on personality and inflammatory markers. Consistent with the inflammation hypothesis, the sTNFR1 finding supports a potential biological pathway between personality and cognition.
Objectives:
Clinical observations and studies of retrospective observer ratings point to changes in personality in persons with cognitive impairment or dementia. The timing and magnitude of such changes, however, are unclear. This study used prospective self-reported data to examine the trajectories of personality traits before and during cognitive impairment.
Design:
Longitudinal observational cohort study.
Setting and participants:
Older adults from the United States in the Health and Retirement Study were assessed for cognitive impairment and completed a measure of the 5 major personality traits every 4 years from 2006 to 2020 (N = 22,611; n = 5507 with cognitive impairment; 50,786 personality and cognitive assessments).
Methods:
Multilevel modeling examined changes before and during cognitive impairment, accounting for demographic differences and normative age-related trajectories.
Results:
Before cognitive impairment was detected, extraversion (b = -0.10, SE = 0.02), agreeableness (b = -0.11, SE = 0.02), and conscientiousness (b = -0.12, SE = 0.02) decreased slightly; there was no significant change in neuroticism (b = 0.04, SE = 0.02) or openness (b = -0.06, SE = 0.02). During cognitive impairment, faster rates of change were found for all 5 personality traits: neuroticism (b = 0.10, SE = 0.03) increased, and extraversion (b = -0.14, SE = 0.03), openness (b = -0.15, SE = 0.03), agreeableness (b = -0.35, SE = 0.03), and conscientiousness (b = -0.34, SE = 0.03) declined.
Conclusions and implications:
Cognitive impairment is associated with a pattern of detrimental personality changes across the preclinical and clinical stages. Compared with the steeper rate of change during cognitive impairment, the changes were small and inconsistent before impairment, making them unlikely to be useful predictors of incident dementia. The study findings further indicate that individuals can update their personality ratings during the early stages of cognitive impairment, providing valuable information in clinical settings. The results also suggest an acceleration of personality change with the progression to dementia, which may lead to behavioral, emotional, and other psychological symptoms commonly observed in people with cognitive impairment and dementia.
Language processing relies on both incremental processing in which ongoing input is used to activate meaning on the fly (immediacy) and segmental processing in which the mental representation is consolidated (integration). We review the history of this distinction and evidence for how these processes work together to balance quick processing of rapid input with consolidation, and consider how these processes change with age.
With a novel multilingual approach, this cross-cultural meta-analysis study investigated the associations between personality traits and Internet addiction. Articles were identified and retrieved by searching through general and language-specific databases, and thereafter reviewed for inclusion based on the selection criteria. Random effects models with the Hartung-Knapp-Sidik-Jonkman method were used to examine the associations of Internet addiction with seven personality traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Psychoticism, and Lie (OCEAN-PL). Forest plots with summary statistics were produced to inspect the between-study heterogeneity. Subgroup analysis was performed to further determine the contributions of moderators (geographic region, population subgroup, scales for assessing personality traits and Internet addiction, and language of publication) to the observed between-study heterogeneity. Funnel plots and Egger's test were used to detect possible small-study effects. A sample of 34,438 participants from 37 studies (24 from Asia) were included for data analysis. The major languages of publications of the selected articles were English and Asian languages. According to the pooled results, Internet addiction was associated positively with Neuroticism and Psychoticism, but negatively with Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Lie. Geographic region and language of publication significantly moderated the associations of Internet addiction with Agreeableness and Neuroticism, and Openness and Extraversion, respectively. No significant small-study effect was present for all OCEAN-PL personality traits, except Neuroticism. In conclusion, the Internet addiction group is relatively more neurotic and psychotic, and less conscientious, extraverted, agreeable, and untruthful than the nonaddiction group. A multilingual approach is useful for improving the search strategies for systematic reviews, cross-cultural meta-analyses in particular.
The ability to rapidly and systematically access knowledge stored in long‐term memory in response to incoming sensory information—that is, to derive meaning from the world—lies at the core of human cognition. Research using methods that can precisely track brain activity over time has begun to reveal the multiple cognitive and neural mechanisms that make this possible. In this article, I delineate how a process of connecting affords an effortless, continuous infusion of meaning into human perception. In a relatively invariant time window, uncovered through studies using the N400 component of the event‐related potential, incoming sensory information naturally induces a graded landscape of activation across long‐term semantic memory, creating what might be called “proto‐concepts”. Connecting can be (but is not always) followed by a process of further considering those activations, wherein a set of more attentionally demanding “active comprehension” mechanisms mediate the selection, augmentation, and transformation of the initial semantic representations. The result is a limited set of more stable bindings that can be arranged in time or space, revised as needed, and brought to awareness. With this research, we are coming closer to understanding how the human brain is able to fluidly link sensation to experience, to appreciate language sequences and event structures, and, sometimes, to even predict what might be coming up next. This Presidential Address reviews several decades of work using human electrophysiological methods to build an understanding of how we comprehend the world around us. The brain is able to rapidly and pervasively connect incoming sensory information to knowledge stored in long‐term memory, a process reflected in the N400 component of the event‐related potential. Using attention, this information can then be actively considered further, creating representations that allow prediction, selection, revision, sequencing, and elaboration.
Although it has been scarcely investigated, personality might help shape language comprehension during social interaction. The aim is to investigate how differences in personality might affect morphosyntactic processing and whether it may be affected by social presence. In a correctness judgement task, participants read sentences that were correct or contained a morphosyntactic error, either while alone or in the mere presence of a confederate. Participants’ NEO-FFI personality inventory scores were used to analyse behavioural, and event related potential data. Neuroticism and Extraversion interacted with error rate and reaction time, while Conscientiousness only interacted with reaction time. A weak N400-like component to morphosyntactic anomalies was triggered for introverts in the social presence condition, compared to a LAN in the alone one, while a LAN was triggered in both conditions for extraverts. Whereas higher Conscientiousness was related to a stronger LAN and a weaker P600 component, lower Conscientiousness reflected the opposite pattern.
Five-factor model (FFM) personality traits are related to basic cognitive functions and risk of cognitive impairment in late life. The present study addresses whether FFM traits are also associated with a more complex cognitive function, reasoning, across adulthood. We used seven samples to examine the relation between personality and verbal (total N= 39,177) and numeric (total N= 76,388) reasoning. A meta-analysis indicated higher Neuroticism was associated modestly with worse performance on verbal and numeric reasoning tasks. Openness was associated with better verbal reasoning and was unrelated to numeric reasoning. Surprisingly, Extraversion was associated modestly with worse performance in both domains, and Conscientiousness was essentially unrelated to reasoning. Agreeableness was unrelated to reasoning. There was significant heterogeneity across the samples but only limited evidence for moderation by age or sex. Consistent with other cognitive domains, the results suggested that Neuroticism is related to worse performance globally, whereas Openness tends to be associated with better verbal abilities. Among the unexpected findings was the better reasoning of introverts. The pattern also suggests that the common positive association between Conscientiousness and cognition does not extend to reasoning and suggests that Conscientiousness may support healthier cognitive aging through basic cognitive functions rather than through complex functions like reasoning.
Objective
Personality and cognitive abilities have been previously linked. However, there are inconsistencies regarding whether this relationship varies as a function of age, and a lack of evidence on whether gender contributes to this relation, particularly across the adulthood. Therefore, this study investigated the association between personality and cognition across adult lifespan, accounting for age and gender.
Methods
We examined the association between personality and cognition in two large samples (Sample 1: N = 422; Sample 2: N = 549) including young, middle aged and older adults. Participants completed personality scales and several cognitive measures related to reasoning, language, memory and speed of processing. Structural equation modelling was applied in order to investigate associations between personality and cognition, and moderation of age and gender within this relationship. We also conducted a mini‐metanalysis procedure in order to examine personality‐cognition associations, combining results from the two samples.
Results
Openness was the main trait associated with cognitive performance; however, extraversion, conscientiousness and neuroticism were also independently associated with cognition. Age and gender did not consistently moderate personality‐cognition in each sample, but the mini‐metanalysis showed that gender moderated conscientiousness‐cognition associations.
Conclusions
We provided robust evidence of personality‐cognition associations across the adult lifespan, which was not consistently moderated by age, but in part by gender.
Because the risk for cognitive pathologies such as Alzheimer’s Disease increases with advancing age, there is a critical interest in understanding the pathways that promote healthy cognitive aging. In this chapter, we review an increasingly growing set of literatures highlighting the importance of personality traits in shaping trajectories of cognitive health over the adult lifespan. We consider the evidence for differential relationships between personality and a number of cognitive domains (e.g., episodic memory, executive function) and explore the role of specific personality traits as protective factors and risk factors for cognitive change in aging. We chart the pathways (e.g., activity engagement, health behaviors) through which personality impacts cognition and consider the evidence for personality as a critical factor in understanding risk for pathological cognitive impairment in older adulthood.
Humans vary in almost every dimension imaginable, and language is no exception. In this article, we review the past research that has focused on individual differences (IDs) in first language acquisition. We first consider how different theoretical traditions in language acquisition treat IDs, and we argue that a focus on IDs is important given its potential to reveal the developmental dynamics and architectural constraints of the linguistic system. We then review IDs research that has examined variation in children's linguistic input, early speech perception, and vocabulary and grammatical development. In each case, we observe systematic and meaningful variation, such that variation in one domain (e.g., early auditory and speech processing) has meaningful developmental consequences for development in higher-order domains (e.g., vocabulary). The research suggests a high degree of integration across the linguistic system, in which development across multiple linguistic domains is tightly coupled.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 6 is January 14, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
A number of studies have found that older adults' sentence processing tends not to be characterized by the prediction-related effects attested for young adults. Here, we further probed older adults' sensitivity to predictability and congruity by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as adults over age 60 read pairs of sentences, which ended with either the expected word, an unexpected word from the same semantic category, or an unexpected word from a different category. Half of the contexts were highly constraining. Consistent with patterns attested when older adults listened to these same materials (Federmeier et al., 2002), N400s, on average, were smaller to expected than to unexpected words, but did not show constraint-related reductions for unexpected words that shared features with the most predictable completion (an effect well-attested in young adults). This pattern resembles that seen in young adults for right-hemisphere-biased processing. To assess whether older adults retain young-like hemispheric asymmetries but recruit right hemisphere mechanisms more, we examined responses to the target words using visual half-field presentation. Whereas young adults show an asymmetric pattern, with prediction-related N400 amplitude reductions for left- but not right-hemisphere-initiated processing (Federmeier and Kutas, 1999b), older adults showed no reliable processing asymmetries and no evidence for prediction with left hemisphere-initiated presentation. The results suggest that left hemisphere mechanisms important for prediction during language processing are less efficacious in older adulthood.
Healthy older adults experience a general decrement in physical and cognitive abilities with advancing age. The severity of these behavioral and neurocognitive declines is highly variable within the aged population. The Neurocognitive Reserve Hypothesis has been proposed in the cognitive and clinical neuroscience of aging to suggest that mentally-stimulating activities and life-long experiences may provide reserve—a protective mechanism that increases the brain's capacity to cope with age-related pathology. This model of the neurocognitive reserve hypothesis has successfully provided a theoretical account for the disjunction between the degree of observed brain damage/pathology and the clinical manifestations of that damage, both structurally and functionally. This article briefly reviews the behavioral and neuroimaging evidence that neurocognitive reserve shapes age-related and individual differences in neurocognitive processes, patterns of neural activation, brain structures and neural networks. Moreover, existing theoretical frameworks proposed in the aging literature are introduced to complement the understanding of neurocognitive reserve in normal and pathological aging. Finally, we report preliminary functional and structural neuroimaging results to support the hypothesis that neurocognitive reserve is a neural resource that mitigates not only the effects of cognitive decline caused by neurological diseases and/or psychiatric disorders, but also those caused by the general aging process. We conclude that there is currently limited understanding of the mechanisms underlying neurocognitive reserve; however, the concept provides a dynamic view for understanding the nature of resilience and our ability to adapt as we age to cope with brain pathology and damage. Future studies may consider decoding the individualized factors potentially underpinning neurocognitive reserve's beneficial contribution to protecting against accelerated cognitive decline and to promoting psychological resilience with advanced aging.
Objective:
This study aimed to examine the association of loneliness and social isolation on cognition over a three-year follow-up period in middle- and older-aged adults.
Methods:
Data from a Spanish nationally representative sample were analysed (n=1691; aged 50+ years). Loneliness, social isolation and cognition (immediate recall, delayed recall, verbal fluency, forward digit span, backward digit span and a composite cognitive score) was assessed both at baseline and at follow-up. Adjusted generalised estimating equations models were performed.
Results:
Loneliness was significantly associated with lower scores in the composite cognitive score, immediate and delayed recall, verbal fluency and backward digit span (B=-0.14 to B=-3.16; p<0.05) and with a more rapid decline from baseline to follow-up in two out of six cognitive tests. Social isolation was associated with lower scores in composite cognitive score, verbal fluency and forward digit span (B=-0.06 to B=-0.85; p<0.05). The effect of loneliness and social isolation on cognition remained significant after the exclusion of individuals with depression.
Conclusions:
Both loneliness and social isolation are associated with decreased cognitive function over a 3-year follow-up period. The development of interventions that include the enhancement of social participation and the maintenance of emotionally supportive relationships might contribute to cognitive decline prevention and risk reduction.
During reading, effects of contextual support indexed by N400 – a brain potential sensitive to semantic activation/retrieval – amplitude are presumably mediated by comprehenders’ world knowledge. Moreover, variability in knowledge may influence the contents, timing, and mechanisms of what is brought to mind during real-time sentence processing. Since it is infeasible to assess the entirety of each individual’s knowledge, we investigated a limited domain – the narrative world of Harry Potter (HP). We recorded event-related brain potentials while participants read sentences ending in words more/less contextually supported. For sentences about HP, but not about general topics, contextual N400 effects were graded according to individual participants’ HP knowledge. Our results not only confirm that context affects semantic processing by ∼250 ms or earlier, on average, but empirically demonstrate what has until now been assumed – that N400 context effects are a function of each individual’s knowledge, which here is highly correlated with their reading experience.
This version of record is a post-peer review preprint of an article accepted by the European Journal of Personality. It may not represent the final published manuscript that is available through the journal (doi: 10.1002/per.2157). Data, R code, cleaning procedures, and analysis methods are all openly available on the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/craky/. Openness to Experience—the enjoyment of novel experiences and ideas—has many connections to cognitive processes. People high in Openness to Experience, for example, tend to be more creative and have broader general knowledge than people low in Openness to Experience. In the current study, we use a network science approach to examine if the organization of semantic memory differs between high and low groups of Openness to Experience. A sample of 516 adults completed measures of Openness to Experience (from the NEO-FFI-3 and Big Five Aspect Scales) and a semantic verbal fluency task. Next, the sample was split in half to form high (n = 258) and low (n = 258) Openness to Experience groups. Semantic networks were then constructed based on their verbal fluency responses. Our results revealed that the high Openness to Experience group’s network was more interconnected, flexible, and had better local organization of associations than the low Openness to Experience group. We also found that the high Openness to Experience group generated more responses on average and provided more unique responses than the low Openness to Experience group. Taken together, our results indicate that Openness to Experience is related to semantic memory structure.
Humans differ in innumerable ways, with considerable variation observable at every level of description, from the molecular to the social. Traditionally, linguistic and psycholinguistic theory has downplayed the possibility of meaningful differences in language across individuals. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that there is significant variation among speakers at any age as well as across the lifespan. Here, we review recent research in psycholinguistics, and argue that a focus on individual differences (IDs) provides a crucial source of evidence that bears strongly upon core issues in theories of the acquisition and processing of language; specifically, the role of experience in language acquisition, processing, and attainment, and the architecture of the language system.
Objectives:
Neuroticism is a broad construct that conveys a predisposition to experience psychological distress and negative mood states. Vulnerability to stress (VS) is one neuroticism trait that has been linked to worse mood and cognitive outcomes in older adults. We hypothesized that elevated VS would be associated with worse illness course and cognitive decline in older adults with late-life major depression (LLD).
Design:
Participants were enrolled in the Neurocognitive Outcomes of Depression in the Elderly (NCODE), a longitudinal investigation of the predictors of poor illness course and cognitive decline in LLD. Participants were followed upwards of 10 years.
Setting:
NCODE operates in a naturalistic treatment milieu.
Participants:
112 participants aged 60 and older with a current diagnosis of major depressive disorder.
Measurements:
Treatment response was assessed at least every 3 months and more often if clinically needed. Participants also completed the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO PI-R) and an annual cognitive examination. Neuroticism traits from the NEO PI-R included anxiety, depression, anger-hostility, self-consciousness, impulsivity, and VS.
Results:
Higher neuroticism traits of VS, impulsivity, anger-hostility, and anxiety were associated with worse treatment response over time. High VS was the only neuroticism trait significantly associated with cognitive functioning. High VS negatively influenced the rate of global cognitive decline over time.
Conclusions:
Individual personality traits within the neuroticism dimension are associated with treatment resistance and cognitive impairment in LLD. It remains to be seen whether these individual traits are associated with different neurobiological substrates and clinical characteristics of LLD.
Objectives:
The aim of this study was to assess the association between personality factors and age-related longitudinal cognitive performance, and explore interactions of stress-proneness with apolipoprotein E (APOE) ɛ4, a prevalent risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD).
Methods:
A total of 510 neuropsychiatrically healthy residents of Maricopa County recruited through media ads (mean age 57.6±10.6 years; 70% women; mean education 15.8±2.4 years; 213 APOE ɛ4 carriers) had neuropsychological testing every 2 years (mean duration follow-up 9.1±4.4 years), and the complete Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Personality Inventory-Revised. Several tests were administered within each of the following cognitive domains: memory, executive skills, language, visuospatial skills, and general cognition. Primary effects on cognitive trajectories and APOE ɛ4 interactions were ascertained with quadratic models.
Results:
With personality factors treated as continuous variables, Neuroticism was associated with greater decline, and Conscientiousness associated with reduced decline consistently across tests in memory and executive domains. With personality factors trichotomized, the associations of Neuroticism and Conscientiousness were again highly consistent across tests within memory and to a lesser degree executive domains. While age-related memory decline was greater in APOE ɛ4 carriers as a group than ɛ4 noncarriers, verbal memory decline was mitigated in ɛ4 carriers with higher Conscientiousness, and visuospatial perception and memory decline was mitigated in ɛ4 carriers with higher Openness.
Conclusions:
Neuroticism and Conscientiousness were associated with changes in longitudinal performances on tests sensitive to memory and executive skills. APOE interactions were less consistent. Our findings are consistent with previous studies that have suggested that personality factors, particularly Neuroticism and Conscientiousness are associated with cognitive aging patterns. (JINS, 2016, 22, 1-12).
Conscientiousness is related to a range of important life outcomes, so it is important to understand its development early in life. We examined how conscientiousness changes from late childhood through middle adolescence and what other psychosocial changes it co-occurs with. We developed and validated a conscientiousness scale for use in existing data. Then in a longitudinal study of participants at ages 10, 13, and 16 (N = 90 at Time 1) we used growth curve modeling to examine how conscientiousness co-develops with academic, health, and relationship functioning. Mean levels of conscientiousness decreased from 10 to 13 and then increased to age 16. The later increase was stronger among females. Changes in conscientiousness were associated with adaptive changes in other variables.
Across two studies we test the prediction that multicultural experiences reduce
intercultural prejudice by increasing Openness to Experience. In
Study 1, frequency of self-reported multicultural experiences was associated
with greater openness and less ethnic prejudice, and openness explained the
relationship between multicultural experiences and ethnic prejudice. In
Study 2, we experimentally manipulated a multicultural experience. Compared
to those in a control condition, participants exposed to the cultural
members and elements of foreign cultures reported being higher in Openness
to Experience and expressed less prejudice toward these cultural groups.
There was also some evidence that multicultural exposure, through openness,
caused secondary transfer effects in prejudice reduction. Our findings
suggest that exposure to multicultural environments can improve intercultural
attitudes by personality shifts to Openness to Experience.
Reading bears the evolutionary footprint of spoken communication. Prosodic contour in speech helps listeners parse sentences and establish semantic focus. Readers’ regulation of input mirrors the segmentation patterns of prosody, such that reading times are longer for words at the ends of syntactic constituents. As reflected in these “micropauses,” older readers are often found to segment text into smaller chunks. The mechanisms underlying these micropauses are unclear, with some arguing that they derive from the mental simulation of prosodic contour and others arguing they reflect higher-level language comprehension mechanisms (e.g., conceptual integration, consolidation with existing knowledge, ambiguity resolution) that are common across modality and support the consolidation of the memory representation. The authors review evidence based on reading time and comprehension performance to suggest that (a) age differences in segmentation derive both from age-related declines in working memory, as well as from crystallized ability and knowledge, which have the potential to grow in adulthood, and that (b) shifts in segmentation patterns may be a pathway through which language comprehension is preserved in late life.