Performance of Older Adults in Tasks of Symmetry and Reversal of Simple Discriminations

• Grant number: 24/16249-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2025
• End date: January 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Andréia Schmidt
• Grantee: Beatriz de Carvalho de Almeida
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Cognitive Flexibility is the ability to adapt a behavior in order to attend to new demands imposed by changes in the environment. The literature indicates, albeit inconsistently, a decline in this ability throughout the ageing process. The aim of this research will be to identify whether there is an effect of age on CF based on the performance of older people in two different tasks: Reversal of Simple Discriminations (RSD) and Symmetry. 48 adults of both sexes will participate, divided equally into two groups: a younger adult group (YAG), aged between 18 and 30 years; and an older adult group (OAG), aged 60 years or over. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment-Basic (MoCA-B) will be administered to the older participants to identify signs of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). All participants will answer a sociodemographic questionnaire and then the MoCA-B will be administered only to the OAG. Following this, the RSD and Symmetry tasks will be performed, both presented on the computer. In the RSD, participants will learn three simultaneous simple visual discriminations, with three pairs of stimuli. After learning, there will be three reversals of stimulus functions (S+ will become S- and vice versa). In the Symmetry task, after learning three conditional visual-visual discriminations in a matching-to-sample task, symmetry tests will be conducted, in which the model stimuli will be presented as comparisons and vice versa. Based on an exploratory analysis of the data, a correlation will be made between the data obtained in the two tasks, for both groups. The performances of the two groups of participants in both tasks will also be compared.