What Motivates Older Adults to Stay Mentally Active?

Editor’s Note:This is a guest post from Nash Dunn, a writer in the communications office of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

As we age, it can be harder to do what’s good for the mind.

Research shows that regularly exercising the brain, for instance, can help older adults mitigate normal declines in cognition, or how we think, understand, learn and remember. However, that effort comes with costs — such as mental fatigue — that typically increase as we get older.

Psychologists at NC State University want to know how those increased costs affect our motivation to engage in cognitively-rewarding tasks.

Under a five-year, $1.84 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, the team of researchers will study how both older and younger adults in Wake County respond to effortful cognitive activity and what factors may influence their participation.

“One of the things that literature has shown us is that when people are engaged mentally, physically or socially, it has positive cognitive consequences,” said汤姆·赫斯, a professor of psychology and the lead investigator of the NIH-funded project. “We have that piece of the puzzle, but the piece we don’t have is why people engage or don’t engage.”

The core component of the project is a longitudinal study that will span the five-year period of the grant. Through lab testing and follow-up interviews, the researchers will examine how changes in effort during engaging tasks affect the motivation of study participants to participate in cognitively demanding — but potentially beneficial — activities in their everyday lives.

Hess said the team will measure the cognitive costs of engagement through cardiovascular response, specifically blood pressure.

“当您参与任务并使用更多的氧气时，您的心血管反应会增加；因此，血压将使我们对某人的参与度有很好的代表。”赫斯说。“我们将研究对参与和努力的心血管反应的五年变化，并将其与内在动机的变化进行比较。”

The project builds off a theoretical framework that has evolved out of theNC State Adult Development Laboratoryand was formally presented ina paper published inPerspectives on Psychological Science. The framework, called“selective engagement,”suggests that motivation is a key factor in explaining why older adults show declines in cognitive abilities in lab testing, but not necessarily daily life situations such as the workplace.

当前的研究将试图揭示其中的一些动力。赫斯说，例如，老年人对衰老影响的态度可能在他们从事积极认知活动的程度中发挥重要作用。研究人员将作为当前项目的一部分进行研究。

“A person who has a more positive attitude may see the activity as demanding, but doesn’t necessarily equate it to the negative effects of getting older,” Hess hypothesized. “They may be more likely to engage in an activity over time.”

For the project, Hess said he’ll be working with several NC State graduate students, in addition to Associate Professor of Psychology Shevaun Neupert, and Duke University Psychology and Neuroscience Professor Andrew Sherwood.

Individuals interested in participating in this study or related projects can call 919-515-9063 or email cognitivedevelopment@ncsu.edu.