Why are older people less prone to mind wandering?

Invite a group of older participants to a psychology laboratory to engage in computer-based mental tasks, and you'll find that their minds wander less often than the minds of young adults. This has been established many times by studies that interrupt participants mid-task to ask them what they're thinking about.

At first, the finding appears to be a conundrum. Older adults typically perform worse on cognitive tasks than younger people, and ageing is usually thought to have an adverse effect on concentration. So, if anything, you'd think mind wandering would increase with age.

In fact, the age-related decrease in mind wandering is consistent with an influential theory. This states that we mind wander off a primary task when we have mental capacity to spare, such as when that task is easy or well-practised. By this account, it makes sense that older adults mind wander less because they have fewer attentional resources to spare.

However, not all experts accept this resource-based theory. Jennifer McVay and her colleagues propose an opposite account of mind wandering. They think we mind wander when we lose attentional control and our focus turns away from the task toward other issues of concern. They point to research showing that the performance of young and old is harmed equally by mind wandering, a fact that doesn't make sense in terms of mind wandering only occurring when the mind has spare capacity.

In a new study, McVay and her colleagues tested the idea that past research has underestimated how often older adults mind wander. They think this mind wandering tends to be toward performance-related concerns that previous research has probably miscategorised as on-task focus. Older adults are more anxious about doing well, McVay says, and so a lot of their mid-task thoughts are about their performance, which is not the same as being focused on the actual task.

An initial study involved 108 young adults (aged 18-28) and 99 older adults (aged 60 to 75) completing two computer tasks. One was a test of inhibitory control; the other a test of sustained vigilance. During these tasks, the participants were periodically prompted to say what they were thinking about. McVay's crucial innovation was to present participants with a response category that related to performance concerns, alongside the categories of completely off-topic thoughts or pure task focus.

As predicted, the older adults reported more thoughts that were about task-related concerns (thoughts that may have been mis-categorised by earlier research as task focus). But even taking these extra performance-related thoughts into account, the older adults still mind wandered far less often than the younger adults (31 per cent vs. 48 per cent). Or, put differently, the older adults still spent more time focused on the actual tasks.

A second study with a new batch of older and younger participants was similar but this time the task was harder - requiring participants to report whenever the current item in a stream of digits or letters was the same as one that occurred one or two positions previously. The results were similar - older adults reported more task-related concerns for the harder version of this task, but altogether they again actually had fewer moments of lost focus compared with younger participants.

As in previous research, instances of mind wandering were equally harmful to the performance of young and old participants, which McVay's team reiterated was inconsistent with the idea that mind wandering occurs when spare capacity is available. The fact that older adults found the mental capacity to dwell on performance-related concerns more than young people also seems to count against the reserve capacity explanation for why they mind wander less.

So where does this leave us? McVay's group stand by their theory that mind wandering reflects a loss of attentional focus combined with a shift of attention to other concerns. These non-task concerns vary in their salience depending on the context. McVay's team believe that in a laboratory environment older adults are less distracted by off-task concerns, such as their relationships and well-being, and that's why they mind wander less in these kinds of experiments:

"the college campus setting," they explained, "with bustling hallways, high-tech computer workstations, and young student experimenters, is more likely related to the goals and current concerns of the undergraduate population, and so the typical context for aging studies is less likely to trigger current-concern-related TUTs [task unrelated thoughts] in older subjects."

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  McVay, J., Meier, M., Touron, D., and Kane, M. (2013). Aging ebbs the flow of thought: Adult age differences in mind wandering, executive control, and self-evaluation Acta Psychologica, 142 (1), 136-147 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2012.11.006

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

The Special Issue Spotter

We trawl the world's journals so you don't have to:

Psychology of Crime (Journal of Criminal Justice).

Mental Health and Challenging Behaviour (Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities).

How Does the Brain Process Time? (Neuropsychologia).

Developmental Delay (Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews).

The Costs and Benefits of Finding Meaning in the Past (Memory).

Atypical Development (Journal of Child Language).

Parenting for an Early Head Start (Parenting Science and Practice).

Social Dilemmas (Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes).

Special Section on Genomics (Child Development).
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Post compiled by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Was Proust really a neuroscientist?

Psychologist and novelist Charles Fernyhough calls it "one of the most famous passages in modern literature" - the scene when the narrator in Marcel Proust's À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu sips on tea thick with crumbs from a madeleine cake, and memories from his childhood come flooding back. It has become the archetypal depiction of what psychologists refer to as an "involuntary memory".

This capacity for sensory experiences to trigger powerful memories, seemingly beyond our wilful control, has come to be known as a "Proustian moment" or a "Proustian memory". Based on the madeleine episode and other scenes, Evelyne Ender wrote that Proust "anticipat[ed] later discoveries" in memory research. Jonah Lehrer, in Proust was a Neuroscientist, wrote that "We now know that Proust was right about memory."

But how realistic was Proust's depiction of involuntary memory really? A new paper by Emily Troscianko compares the portrayal of the madeleine episode against the latest findings from the cognitive neuroscience of memory.

Here's what Troscianko says Proust got right. One reason smells and tastes can be so evocative is because they are paired with a particular situation, often repeatedly (and also often outside of awareness), and then not experienced again for many years. This fits with the fact the Proustian narrator tasted a tea-soaked cake that he used to enjoy regularly at his aunt's in Combray as a child, but which he hadn't tasted for a long time.

Another fact about memories that wash over us is that they tend to arrive when we're tired or distracted. Again, this matches the madeleine episode, in which the narrator is "dispirited after a dreary day".

Troscianko also credits the madeleine episode for its realistic portrayal of the unusual emotional power of smell-triggered memories. Unlike the other sensory modalities, Troscianko explains how olfaction bypasses the thalamus and heads straight for the hippocampus and amygdala - brain regions involved in emotional memory.

Consistent with Proust, there's also research showing that odour-cued memories tend to originate from earlier in life than memories cued by other means, and that they tend to be emotionally charged but difficult to verbalise. This matches the narrator's description of how tasting the madeleine triggered an "all-powerful joy" alongside a sustained difficulty tracing the source of the memory.

So what did Proust get wrong? First off, Proust's narrator makes out that taste and smell are uniquely evocative. But Troscianko points out this contradicts research on involuntary memories showing that many more are triggered by verbal cues and by the other senses.

Another thing - the detail and accuracy in the recalled memories in Proust go far beyond what is experienced in real life. In fact, research shows smell triggers emotional, vivid memories, but they're not  unusually detailed or specific.

So, all in all, is the madeleine episode an accurate portrayal of an involuntary memory? Here's where things get more complicated. According to Troscianko, the madeleine episode isn't actually an example of an involuntary memory at all. In psychology, involuntary memories are usually thought of as those instances when a cue brings a memory immediately to mind, without any need for conscious reflection or interpretation. By contrast, Proust's narrator tries and tries again, ten times, to retrieve the memories responsible for the emotion stirred in him by the cake. It's a process that takes "at least many seconds" Troscianko estimates, "and probably many minutes".

In an interview in 1913 Proust cited the madeleine episode as an example of an involuntary memory and he said the whole book was about the distinction between voluntary and involuntary memory.  Troscianko doubts the usefulness of the voluntary/involuntary memory distinction and, more important for our discussion, she concludes that Proust mislabeled the madeleine episode. "Literature's most famous example of involuntary memory turns out not to be involuntary after all," she says. Writing in Pieces of Light, The New Science of Memory, Fernyhough agrees: "... Proust's moment is not a 'Proustian moment'."

Proust - a literary genius for certain, but maybe not a neuroscientist after all.

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Troscianko, E. (2013). Cognitive realism and memory in Proust's madeleine episode. Memory Studies DOI: 10.1177/1750698012468000

--Further reading--
Involuntary autobiographical memories (open-access article from The Psychologist).
Do smells really trigger particularly evocative memories?

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Witty people considered particularly suitable for a fling

What is humour for? Of all the explanations, among the better supported is the idea that it acts as a mating signal. Research with heterosexuals suggests that men, in particular, use humour to show-off their intelligence and good genes to women. A similar but alternative proposal is that wit is used by a male or female joker to convey their sexual interest to a person they find attractive. A new study finds some support for the latter theory, in that wittier people were seen as particularly attractive for a short-term fling.

In a departure from the field's reliance on questionnaires, Mary Cowan and Anthony Little used real spontaneous humour, which they created by recording 40 undergrad psychology students (20 men) as they explained to camera which two items they'd take to a desert island, and why, choosing from: chocolate, hairspray, or a plastic bag. These "actor" participants weren't told that the study was about humour, but nonetheless 19 of them gave the appearance of trying to be funny in their answers.

Next, 11 "rater" participants (5 men) were played audio recordings of the actors' explanations, and their task was to rate them for funniness, and to rate the attractiveness of each actor for a short-term relationship (dates and one-night stands) and for a long-term relationship. After scoring the audio, the rater participants did the same for a simple head-shot photo of each actor, and then again for the full video version of their explanations.

A key result is that attractive actors (based on the rating of their photo) were judged to be funnier in the video than in the audio, which suggests their physical attractiveness led them to be considered more funny.

Wit also boosted attractiveness. Across audio, photo and video, men who were considered funnier also tended to be considered more attractive for both short and long-term relationships, but especially short term. The link between perceived funniness and attractiveness was not so strong for the female actors, although funniness did still go together with higher perceived attractiveness for short-term relationships. A follow-up study found that funniness ratings were very similar to ratings for perceived flirtatiousness, and that this perceived flirtatiousness explained the link between funniness and appeal for a fling.

Male wit may be more attractive for shorter rather than longer relationships, the researchers surmised, "because it nurtures an impression of not being serious or willing to invest in a mate." Female wit, on the other hand, may be perceived by men as attractive for short-term relationships because it is taken as a sign that "that she will be receptive to his advances."

The use of authentic humorous displays is to be applauded, but the study is hamstrung by several weaknesses. Above all, the sample of rater participants was tiny. Also, the attractiveness ratings all tended to be low. This may be because the male and female raters (no information about their sexual orientation is given) were asked to judge the attractiveness of both men and women. For a study about people's judgements of attractiveness in a relationship context, it also seemed strange that no information was given about the gender and attractiveness of the researchers, who may have inadvertently influenced the participants' behaviour and judgments.

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Cowan, M., and Little, A. (2013). The effects of relationship context and modality on ratings of funniness. Personality and Individual Differences, 54 (4), 496-500 DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2012.10.020

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Link feast

In case you missed them - 10 of the best psychology links from the past week:

1. Obama is planning to spend $billions mapping the human brain, reported the New York Times this week. Science mag provided some more details. What do the experts think? The psychologists Gary Marcus and Christopher Chabris were quick to publish their reactions to the news.

2. Over at the Wall Street Journal, a diverse range of columnists, including psychiatrist Samantha Boardman, shared their thoughts on the topic of discipline. "Self-discipline reminds us we always have a choice," says Boardman. If you are willing to explore alternative behaviors, you open yourself up to possibilities that you never dreamed of."

3. Kerching! Neuroscientist Cornelia I. Bargmann is among the recipients of a new tranche of $3 million mega-awards for top researchers in the life sciences. Nature has a profile of Bargmann, describing her work "unpicking the neural circuits that drive eating, socializing and sex."

4. One of my favourite blogs, Neuroskeptic, has moved home to join the Discover magazine stable - in one first his/her posts on the new site, the Neuroskeptic highlights new research showing that some of the most prestigious journals actually have the poorest standards for reporting statistical details.

5. Forget the Mantel / Middleton gossip in the TLS, the same journal also featured philosopher-medic Ray Tallis reviewing Oliver Sacks' latest book Hallucinations. Although the book bypasses many important philosophical issues arising from hallucinations, Tallis says it is "nonetheless a superb synthesis of the literature on these arresting, disturbing and sometimes terrifying phenomena, and a profound work of humanity."

6. Vaughan Bell at Mind Hacks shares his discovery of a handy online brain anatomy tool: "when you point at any part of an MRI scan it tells you which part of the brain you’re looking at in all three planes."

7. King's College, Cambridge has launched a new magazine, the Kings Review, and in one of the first articles, Dana Smith argues that the new edition of the DSM (American psychiatry's diagnostic code) is over-medicalising normal suffering.

8. Exciting new developments in brain-machine interfacing have been announced at this month's Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Boston.

9. Does Neurofeedback really work? I had a look at the evidence for my Brain Myths blog.

10. Fascinating links between language and a person's ability to save are detailed in this newly posted TED talk from Keith Chen. "languages without a concept for the future -- 'It rain tomorrow,' instead of 'It will rain tomorrow' -- correlate strongly with high savings rates."

And looking ahead to the weekend - watch out for Dame Professor Uta Frith, autism expert, on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs on Sunday at 11.15am.

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Post compiled by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Lying is common at age two, becomes the norm by three

They're too young to need to fib about lipstick on their collar or even their unfinished homework but a new study finds the majority of three-year-olds are already practising liars. Deception in very young children has been documented before, but this is the first time it has been systematically tested in a laboratory.

Angela Evans and Kang Lee tested 65 two- and three-year-olds (28 girls) individually in a quiet room, part of which involved them being told not to peek at a toy. Despite this instruction, 80 per cent of the kids sneaked a peek. And when they were asked afterwards if they'd looked, around a quarter of two-year-olds lied about it, rising to 90 per cent of those aged over 43 months.

Although lying was rife among these young children, most of them weren't very adept at it. When asked what the toy was, 76 per cent of the liars blurted out the answer, exposing their dishonesty.

The researchers also put the toddlers through a series of mental tests to see if any particular skills went hand-in-hand with lying. One of these was a kiddies' version of the Stroop test that involved pointing to small pictures of fruits, while ignoring bigger versions. Like the adult Stroop, success at this task is thought to require a mix of inhibitory control and working memory. Evans and Lee found that the children who excelled at the kiddies' Stroop were more likely to lie, which supports the idea that the development of lying depends on a mix of inhibitory ability and remembering the desired answer.

An important implication of this last point, the researchers said, is that the greater honesty of the younger children isn't a mark of their moral purity, but simply a side-effect of their "fragile executive functioning skills."

A weakness of the study is that it doesn't look at different types of lies or tell us anything about the children's motivation for lying.

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Evans, A., and Lee, K. (2013). Emergence of Lying in Very Young Children. Developmental Psychology DOI: 10.1037/a0031409

--Further reading--
Adults are unable to tell when children are lying.

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

It's not just criminals who feel unsafe when the police are around

The idea that police on our streets makes people feel safer is usually taken as a given. It's the basis of the so-called "reassurance policing" agenda, which advocates higher numbers of visible front-line police. And when increased police numbers are announced, members of the public often welcome the news. "I'm all for more police on the streets," said a Chicago resident earlier this month after the announcement of increased patrols, "It makes me feel safer seeing them around my community."

A new study challenges this received wisdom. Whereas most surveys ask people to reflect on whether they'd feel safer with more visible police, Evelien van de Veer and her colleagues took a different approach, looking at how the presence of police affected people's sense of safety right at that moment.

The researchers quizzed over 200 Amsterdam residents out shopping about how safe they currently felt. For some, two to four police were currently visible patrolling the vicinity; for others no police were present. Overall, the presence of police made no difference to participants' answers. However, focusing just on the male participants - those who answered when a police patrol was nearby actually reported feeling less safe.

Next, the researchers showed 124 students pictures of a street scene and asked them to rate how safe it seemed. The photos were doctored so that some of the participants saw a police officer in the scene. The key finding here was that a graffiti-daubed alleyway was rated as safer when a policeman was in the scene, but a leafy residential street was rated as less safe when a policeman was present. This difference was found for both sexes, but was more pronounced for men.

Van de Veer and her colleagues proposed two possible explanations for what they described as this "ironic" consequence of police presence. They said the sight of a police officer could act as a warning signal, directing people's attention to potential danger in the vicinity. Or they suggested the sight of police could trigger automatic mental associations of concepts like crime or violence (this would be a social priming effect - an area of study that's currently under close scrutiny).

Why were men particularly prone to feeling unsafe in the presence of police? The researchers suggested this may be because they are more often the victim of violent crimes, and more often the cause of police needing to be called to a scene. This reasoning seems vague and van de Veer's team admitted "further exploration of this issue is required."

The researchers concluded that their findings have real-life implications for police forces and policy makers. "A general increase in the number of visibly present police officers may not have the intended effect," they said.

Past research covered on the Digest has shown that CCTV cameras can also increase feelings of insecurity; so too neighbourhood watch signs.

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van de Veer, E., de Lange, M., van der Haar, E., and Karremans, J. (2012). Feelings of Safety: Ironic Consequences of Police Patrolling. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 42 (12), 3114-3125 DOI: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2012.00967.x

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.