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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Aging Psychiatry
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1470649

Preserved learning of implicit regularities with predictive social cues in older adults

Provisionally accepted
Claudia Salera Claudia Salera 1Ala Yankouskaya Ala Yankouskaya 2Maria Daniela Gazzaneo Maria Daniela Gazzaneo 1Alessia Bonavita Alessia Bonavita 1,3Mariella Pazzaglia Mariella Pazzaglia 1,3Cecilia Guariglia Cecilia Guariglia 1,3ANNA PECCHINENDA ANNA PECCHINENDA 1,3*
  • 1 Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Sicily, Italy
  • 2 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science & Technology, Bournemouth University, Poole, England, United Kingdom
  • 3 Santa Lucia Foundation (IRCCS), Rome, Lazio, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    With ageing there are changes in the ability to orient attention, which affect more endogenous than exogenous orienting. However, orienting attention by the gaze direction of others shares characteristics of both exogenous and endogenous attention and it is unclear how it is affected by ageing. Being able to orient attention by the gaze direction of others is important to establish successful social interactions (i.e., joint attention), and when gaze direction predicts where in the environment salient events occur, it helps to successfully navigate the environment. Here we investigated whether older individuals learn implicit regularities between the direction of eye gaze and a spatial location where salient events occur. We also assessed the association between orienting attention by the gaze of others and loneliness. Seventy older individuals completed the three-items UCLA loneliness scale and the gaze cueing task, in which gaze cues were non-predictive of target location (block 1), but unbeknownst to participants became predictive of the spatial location where the target appeared (block 2) and then, returned to being non-predictive (block 3). Findings clearly show that older individuals are less able to orient attention by non-predictive gaze cues, but they successfully learn from environmental regularities implemented with direction of eye gaze. This learning biases attention as it enhances the gaze cueing effect even when the regularities are not present. Importantly, gaze cueing was not affected by self-reported loneliness. These findings point to a training strategy to improve joint attention in older individuals.

    Keywords: aging1, implicit regularities2, learning3, attention4, gaze cues5, attentional bias6, joint attention7, loneliness8

    Received: 25 Jul 2024; Accepted: 07 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Salera, Yankouskaya, Gazzaneo, Bonavita, Pazzaglia, Guariglia and PECCHINENDA. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: ANNA PECCHINENDA, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, 00185, Sicily, Italy

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