@article{hess_smith_sharifian_2016, title={Aging and Effort Expenditure: The Impact of Subjective Perceptions of Task Demands}, volume={31}, ISSN={["1939-1498"]}, DOI={10.1037/pag0000127}, abstractNote={Engagement in cognitively demanding activities has a positive impact on cognitive health in older adults. Previous work, however, has suggested that the costs associated with engagement increase in later life and influence motivation. We examined how subjective perceptions of these costs varied with age and influenced task engagement. The following questions were of specific interest: (a) Are there age differences in subjective perceptions of cognitive costs? (b) What is the impact of these perceptions on engagement? We tested 39 older (ages 65-84) and 37 younger (20-42) adults on a working memory task. Systolic blood pressure responsivity (SBP-R; reflective of effort) and subjective perceptions of task difficulty were assessed. We found that age was associated with an increase in the perceptions of cognitive costs, and that these subjective perceptions had a stronger impact on older adults' engagement than on that of younger adults. More important, this impact was specific to subjective perceptions of cognitive costs. The results provide further support for the hypothesis that increased costs associated with cognitive engagement influence older adults' willingness to engage cognitive resources, and that these costs in part reflect subjective perceptions that are independent of objective task demands. (PsycINFO Database Record}, number={7}, journal={PSYCHOLOGY AND AGING}, author={Hess, Thomas M. and Smith, Brian T. and Sharifian, Neika}, year={2016}, month={Nov}, pages={653–660} }
 @article{hess_smith_2014, title={Aging and the Impact of Irrelevant Information on Social Judgments}, volume={29}, ISSN={["1939-1498"]}, DOI={10.1037/a0036730}, abstractNote={We conducted 2 experiments to specifically examine whether older adults are more susceptible to the negative impact of irrelevant evaluative information when making social judgments. Young (ages 20-44), middle-aged (ages 45-63), and older (ages 65-85) adults were presented with descriptions of people consisting of positive and negative traits that varied in relevance to specific occupations. They were asked to either form a general impression based on these traits or to evaluate the person's fitness for the specified occupation. In both studies, evaluative content of the descriptions (i.e., the number of positive minus number of negative traits) was a significant predictor of subjective evaluations. Of prime importance, adults of all ages were similarly able to selectively process relevant versus irrelevant information when occupational fitness evaluations required them to focus on a subset of information in the descriptions. Participants also adjusted the specific types of information used in making judgments, with the relative importance of agentic traits and negative information being greater when making occupation evaluations than when forming impressions. The results suggest that age differences in the processing evaluative information are minimal, and that the availability of well-established knowledge structures can help older adults effectively control the impact of irrelevant evaluative information when making social inferences.}, number={3}, journal={PSYCHOLOGY AND AGING}, author={Hess, Thomas M. and Smith, Brian T.}, year={2014}, month={Sep}, pages={542–553} }
 @article{ennis_hess_smith_2013, title={The Impact of Age and Motivation on Cognitive Effort: Implications for Cognitive Engagement in Older Adulthood}, volume={28}, ISSN={["0882-7974"]}, DOI={10.1037/a0031255}, abstractNote={We examined age differences in the effort required to perform the basic cognitive operations needed to achieve a specified objective outcome, and how hypothesized increases in effort requirements in later life are related to intrinsic motivation associated with enjoyment of and participation in effortful cognitive activities. Young (N = 59; 20-40 years) and older (N = 57; 64-85 years) adults performed a memory-search task varying in difficulty across trials, with systolic blood pressure responsivity-calculated as the increase over baseline during task performance-used as a measure of effort expenditure and task engagement. Consistent with expectations, older adults exhibited greater levels of responsivity (i.e., effort) at all levels of objective task difficulty, and this increase was reflected in subjective perceptions of difficulty. Older adults also exhibited greater levels of disengagement (i.e., effort withdrawal) than younger adults at higher levels of task difficulty, conceivably reflecting the disproportionately greater effort required for successful performance in the former group. We also found that, relative to younger adults, older adults' engagement was more sensitive to the importance attached to the task (i.e., motivation to do well). Finally, we also obtained evidence that increased costs associated with cognitive engagement in later life were negatively associated with intrinsic levels of motivation to engage in effortful cognitive activity. The results support the general conclusion that the costs of cognitive activity increase with age in adulthood, and that these costs influence individuals' willingness to engage resources in support of demanding cognitive activities.}, number={2}, journal={PSYCHOLOGY AND AGING}, author={Ennis, Gilda E. and Hess, Thomas M. and Smith, Brian T.}, year={2013}, month={Jun}, pages={495–504} }