Cargando…

Explicit and implicit timing in older adults: Dissociable associations with age and cognitive decline

This study aimed to test two common explanations for the general finding of age-related changes in the performance of timing tasks within the millisecond-to-second range intervals. The first explanation is that older adults have a real difficulty in temporal processing as compared to younger adults....

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Capizzi, Mariagrazia, Visalli, Antonino, Faralli, Alessio, Mioni, Giovanna
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8926191/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35294473
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264999
_version_ 1784670185371729920
author Capizzi, Mariagrazia
Visalli, Antonino
Faralli, Alessio
Mioni, Giovanna
author_facet Capizzi, Mariagrazia
Visalli, Antonino
Faralli, Alessio
Mioni, Giovanna
author_sort Capizzi, Mariagrazia
collection PubMed
description This study aimed to test two common explanations for the general finding of age-related changes in the performance of timing tasks within the millisecond-to-second range intervals. The first explanation is that older adults have a real difficulty in temporal processing as compared to younger adults. The second explanation is that older adults perform poorly on timing tasks because of their reduced cognitive control functions. These explanations have been mostly contrasted in explicit timing tasks that overtly require participants to process interval durations. Fewer studies have instead focused on implicit timing tasks, where no explicit instructions to process time are provided. Moreover, the investigation of both explicit and implicit timing in older adults has been restricted so far to healthy older participants. Here, a large sample (N = 85) comprising not only healthy but also pathological older adults completed explicit (time bisection) and implicit (foreperiod) timing tasks within a single session. Participants’ age and cognitive decline, measured with the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), were used as continuous variables to explain performance on explicit and implicit timing tasks. Results for the explicit timing task showed a flatter psychometric curve with increasing age or decreasing MMSE scores, pointing to a deficit at the level of cognitive control functions rather than of temporal processing. By contrast, for the implicit timing task, a decrease in the MMSE scores was associated with a reduced foreperiod effect, an index of implicit time processing. Overall, these findings extend previous studies on explicit and implicit timing in healthy aged samples by dissociating between age and cognitive decline (in the normal-to-pathological continuum) in older adults.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-8926191
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2022
publisher Public Library of Science
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-89261912022-03-17 Explicit and implicit timing in older adults: Dissociable associations with age and cognitive decline Capizzi, Mariagrazia Visalli, Antonino Faralli, Alessio Mioni, Giovanna PLoS One Research Article This study aimed to test two common explanations for the general finding of age-related changes in the performance of timing tasks within the millisecond-to-second range intervals. The first explanation is that older adults have a real difficulty in temporal processing as compared to younger adults. The second explanation is that older adults perform poorly on timing tasks because of their reduced cognitive control functions. These explanations have been mostly contrasted in explicit timing tasks that overtly require participants to process interval durations. Fewer studies have instead focused on implicit timing tasks, where no explicit instructions to process time are provided. Moreover, the investigation of both explicit and implicit timing in older adults has been restricted so far to healthy older participants. Here, a large sample (N = 85) comprising not only healthy but also pathological older adults completed explicit (time bisection) and implicit (foreperiod) timing tasks within a single session. Participants’ age and cognitive decline, measured with the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), were used as continuous variables to explain performance on explicit and implicit timing tasks. Results for the explicit timing task showed a flatter psychometric curve with increasing age or decreasing MMSE scores, pointing to a deficit at the level of cognitive control functions rather than of temporal processing. By contrast, for the implicit timing task, a decrease in the MMSE scores was associated with a reduced foreperiod effect, an index of implicit time processing. Overall, these findings extend previous studies on explicit and implicit timing in healthy aged samples by dissociating between age and cognitive decline (in the normal-to-pathological continuum) in older adults. Public Library of Science 2022-03-16 /pmc/articles/PMC8926191/ /pubmed/35294473 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264999 Text en © 2022 Capizzi et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Capizzi, Mariagrazia
Visalli, Antonino
Faralli, Alessio
Mioni, Giovanna
Explicit and implicit timing in older adults: Dissociable associations with age and cognitive decline
title Explicit and implicit timing in older adults: Dissociable associations with age and cognitive decline
title_full Explicit and implicit timing in older adults: Dissociable associations with age and cognitive decline
title_fullStr Explicit and implicit timing in older adults: Dissociable associations with age and cognitive decline
title_full_unstemmed Explicit and implicit timing in older adults: Dissociable associations with age and cognitive decline
title_short Explicit and implicit timing in older adults: Dissociable associations with age and cognitive decline
title_sort explicit and implicit timing in older adults: dissociable associations with age and cognitive decline
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8926191/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35294473
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264999
work_keys_str_mv AT capizzimariagrazia explicitandimplicittiminginolderadultsdissociableassociationswithageandcognitivedecline
AT visalliantonino explicitandimplicittiminginolderadultsdissociableassociationswithageandcognitivedecline
AT farallialessio explicitandimplicittiminginolderadultsdissociableassociationswithageandcognitivedecline
AT mionigiovanna explicitandimplicittiminginolderadultsdissociableassociationswithageandcognitivedecline