AGE AND AGEING IN PERSON PERCEPTION

Abstract

Human ageing is typically accompanied by some degree of cognitive slowing. In addition, problems in person memory are among the frequent complaints of elderly people. At the same time, age does not invariably affect all aspects of performance, and elderly people can even outperform younger people in specific tasks. Neurophysiological research demonstrates that high performing elderly people show compensatory activity in brain areas that are not activated in younger or low performing elderly participants, possibly via bilateral hemispheric activation. Thus, increased bilateral hemispheric activation may contribute to ‘successful ageing’. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) are a most sensitive means to investigate age-related changes in neurocognitive processing. In this project, we study face and word processing in elderly people. We focus on bilateral vs unilateral hemispheric activation differences, and on explicit and implicit person-related memory.

Selected Relevant Publications

Kloth, N., Damm, M., Schweinberger, S.R., & Wiese, H. (2015). Aging affects sex categorization of male and female faces in opposite ways. Acta Psychologica, 158, 78-86. (Link to PDF)

Komes, J., Schweinberger, S.R., & Wiese, H. (2014). Fluency affects source memory for familiar names in younger and older adults: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. NeuroImage, 92, 90-105. (Link to PDF)

Komes, J., Schweinberger, S.R., & Wiese, H. (2014). Preserved fine-tuning of face perception and memory: Evidence from the own-race bias in high- and low-performing older adults. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 6, Article 60, 1-10.  (Link to PDF)

Limbach, K., Kaufmann, J.M., Wiese, H., Witte, O.W., & Schweinberger, S.R. (2018). Enhancement of face-sensitive ERPs in older adults induced by face recognition training. Neuropsychologia, 119, 197-213. (Link to PDF)

Neumann, M.F., End, A., Luttmann, S., Schweinberger, S.R., & Wiese, H. (2015). The own-age bias in face memory is unrelated to differences in attention – evidence from event-related potentials. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 15, 180-192. (Link to PDF)

Pfütze, E.-M., Sommer, W., & Schweinberger, S.R. (2002). Age-Related Slowing in Face and Name Recognition: Evidence from Event-Related Brain Potentials. Psychology and Aging, 17, 140-160. (Link to PDF)

Schweinberger, S.R., Pohl, M., & Winkler, P(2020). Autistic traits, personality, and evaluation of humanoid robots by young and older adults. Computers in Human Behavior, 106, 106256. (Link to PDF)

Schweinberger, S.R., & Wiese, H. (2011). Why some faces will not be remembered: Current ERP evidence on memory encoding for other-race and other-age faces. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 5: 104.

Schweinberger, S.R., Zäske, R., Walther, C., Golle, J., Kovács, G., & Wiese, H. (2010). Young without Plastic Surgery: Perceptual adaptation to the age of female and male faces. Vision Research, 50, 2570-2576. (Link to PDF)

Wiese, H. (2012). The role of age and ethnic group in face recognition memory: ERP evi-dence from a combined own-age and own-race bias study. Biological Psychology, 89,137-147.

Wiese, H., Kachel, U., & Schweinberger, S.R. (2013). Holistic face processing of own- and other-age faces in young and older adults: ERP evidence from the composite face task. NeuroImage, 74, 306-317.

Wiese, H., Kloth, N., Güllmar, D., Reichenbach, J.R., & Schweinberger, S.R. (2012). Perceiving age and gender in unfamiliar faces: An fMRI study on face categorization. Brain and Cognition, 78, 163-168.

Wiese, H., Komes, J., & Schweinberger, S.R. (2012). Daily-life contact affects the own-age bias and neural correlates of face memory in elderly participants. Neuropsychologia, 50, 3496-3508.

Wiese, H., Komes, J., & Schweinberger, S.R. (2013). Aging faces in aging minds: A review on the own-age bias in face recognition. Visual Cognition, 21(9-10), 1337-1363. (Link to PDF)

Wiese, H., Komes, J., Tüttenberg, S., Atzmüller, J., & Schweinberger, S.R. (2017). Age-related changes in face recognition: Neural correlates of repetition and semantic priming in young and older adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 43(8), 1254-1273. (Link to PDF)

Wiese, H., Schweinberger S.R., & Hansen, K. (2008). The age of the beholder: ERP evidence of an own-age bias in face memory. Neuropsychologia, 46, 2973-2985. (Link to PDF)

Wiese, H., Schweinberger, S.R., & Neumann, M.F. (2008). Perceiving age and gender in unfamiliar faces: Brain potential evidence for implicit and explicit person categorization. Psychophysiology, 45, 603-615.

Wolff, N., Wiese, H., & Schweinberger, S.R. (2012). Face recognition memory across the adult lifespan: ERP evidence from the own-age bias. Psychology and Aging, 27(4),1066-1081. (Link to PDF)

Zäske, R., Limbach, K., Schneider, D., Skuk, V.G., Dobel, C., Guntinas-Lichius, O., & Schweinberger, S.R. (2018). Electrophysiological correlates of voice memory for young and old speakers in young and old listeners. Neuropsychologia, 116, 215-227. (Link to PDF)

Funding

DFG Grant: WI 3219/ 4-1

Last update: 2018-07-28