Adult aging and social attention: the role of cognitive decline and social motivation.

背景：社会孤立是老年人最普遍的问题之一，但我们对社会沟通技巧的年龄差异知之甚少，而社会沟通技巧可能对建立和维持关系很重要。当前的项目将专注于社会交流的一个特定方面：为什么老年人比年轻人更少参与相互凝视？与年轻人相比，老年人不太可能关注和跟随他人的目光方向。这可能很重要，因为注视他人的目光是一种信息丰富的社交暗示，有助于共同理解和沟通。对于凝视跟随的年龄差异，有两种相反的理论解释。首先，由于感知和认知过程的衰退，老年人可能比年轻人更少地跟随凝视。其次，老年人可能较少表现出注视跟随，因为迄今为止实验研究中使用的典型范式对他们来说没有社会激励作用。我们将使用新颖的实验操作来测试感知、认知和动机机制在注意他人目光的年龄差异中的作用。迄今为止，所有关于凝视跟随的成年人年龄差异的研究都使用了不熟悉面孔的非语境图片。在这里，我们将使用创新的眼动追踪技术来测试复杂社交场景和真实人际互动中注意力注视的年龄差异程度。此外，我们还将探讨在一系列不同的任务中注视跟随与老年人更广泛的社会功能测量之间的关系。目的：本研究主要有三个目的：1)利用新颖的实验范式操作，探讨认知和动机机制在跟随性注视年龄差异中的作用。2)探讨老年人凝视线索的差异使用如何扩展到更复杂的社会场景的处理，并影响与熟悉的他人和陌生人的真实社会互动。3)确定凝视跟随是否与老年人的日常社会功能和沟通技巧有关。这些目标将通过利用申请人在老龄化，视觉注意和社会认知方面的互补专业知识来开发利用眼动追踪技术来理解人际互动中的社会注意的新范式来实现。应用/好处：我们将开发一种新的模型，研究年龄如何影响我们照顾他人的方式，以及这与更广泛的社会功能之间的关系。该项目还将增进对年轻人对老年人的社会关注模式的了解，从而改进代际交流模式。更多地了解年轻人和老年人是如何互动的，对于制定干预措施以改善代际关系、帮助孤立的老年人提高社会互动技能，以及从长远来看，解决与社会孤立有关的问题都很重要。该项目还将增加对注视跟随本质的理论理解，以及它如何受到感知、认知和动机因素的影响。一个关键的好处将是一个更完整和多维的老年社会关注理论。

Context: Social isolation is one of the most prevalent problems for older adults, but we know relatively little about age differences in social communication skills likely to be important in initiating and maintaining relationships. The current project will focus on one particular aspect of social communication: why do older people engage less in mutual gaze than younger people? Older adults are less likely than young to attend to, and follow the eye gaze direction of, other people. This is likely to be important, because attending to another's gaze is an informative social cue which facilitates joint understanding and communication. There are two opposing theoretical explanations for age differences in gaze following. First, older adults may follow gaze less than young because of declining perceptual and cognitive processes. Second, older adults may show less gaze following because the typical paradigms used in experimental studies to date are not socially motivating for them. We will use novel experimental manipulations to test the role of the perceptual, cognitive and motivational mechanisms underlying age difference in attention to others' eye gaze. To date, all of the studies of adult age differences in gaze following have used decontextualized pictures of unfamiliar faces. Here we will use innovative eye-tracking technology to test the extent of age differences in attention to gaze in complex social scenes and real interpersonal interactions. Also we will explore the relationship between gaze following in a range of different tasks and measures of broader social functioning in older adults. Aims: The research has three main aims: 1) To test the role of cognitive and motivational mechanisms in age differences in following eye gaze, using novel manipulations of experimental paradigms. 2) To explore how older adults' differential use of gaze cues extend to the processing of more complex social scenes and influence real social interactions with both familiar others and strangers. 3) To establish whether gaze following is related to everyday social functioning and communication skills in older adults. These aims will be achieved by harnessing the applicants' complementary expertise in aging, visual attention, and social cognition to develop novel paradigms using eye-tracking technology to understand social attention in interpersonal interactions.Applications/benefits: We will develop a new model of how aging influences the way in which we attend to other people, and how this relates to social functioning more broadly. The project will also increase understanding of the pattern of younger adults' social attention to older adults, and thus improve models of intergeneration communication. Understanding more about how younger and older people interact is important in developing interventions to improve intergenerational relationships, helping isolated older people improve social interaction skills, and in the longer term to address issues surrounding social isolation. This project will also increase theoretical understanding of the nature of gaze following, and how it is influenced by perceptual, cognitive and motivational factors. A key benefit will be a more integrated and multi-dimensional theory of social attention in old age.