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The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences Advance Access originally published online on April 7, 2009
The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 2009 64B(4):447-456; doi:10.1093/geronb/gbp020
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Aging and Selective Engagement: The Moderating Impact of Motivation on Older Adults’ Resource Utilization

Thomas M. Hess, Cassandra M. Germain, Elizabeth L. Swaim and Nicole L. Osowski

Department of Psychology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh

Address correspondence to Thomas M. Hess, PhD, Department of Psychology, Box 7650, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 27695-7650. Email: thomas_hess{at}ncsu.edu


  Abstract

Two studies were conducted to examine age differences in the impact of motivation in a social cognitive task. We tested the hypothesis that aging is associated with an increase in the selective engagement of cognitive resources in support of performance. Different-aged adults read descriptions of 2 people in order to determine which was better suited for a particular job. These descriptions contained behaviors that were either consistent or inconsistent with the job, and participants performed the task under conditions of high versus low accountability. Examination of memory for behavioral information revealed that accountability disproportionately affected older adults’ performance, with the locus of this effect being in conscious recollection processes. This supports the aforementioned selective engagement hypothesis by demonstrating that the differential impact of the motivational manipulation was based in deliberative memory processes.

Key Words: Aging • Impression formation • Motivation—Person memory • Social cognition

Received June 27, 2008; Accepted February 4, 2009

Decision Editor: Elizabeth Stine-Morrow, PhD


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