Abstract
Past research sees consistent age-related declines across many measures of cognitive
functioning and social understanding. As such, the present study aims to investigate the
age-related links between these measures. I examined this by giving young and older
adults a series of tasks relating to cognitive functioning (statistical learning, working
memory, processing speed, and fluid IQ) and social understanding (emotion recognition
and theory of mind [ToM]). Additionally, I gave them nine social psychology
questionnaires, and a Cyberball task measuring participants’ understanding of when
they were being ostracised. These measures were included to find potential links
between cognitive, social understanding, and prejudice measures. Five hypotheses were
established: 1. Young would outperform old on measures of cognition and social
understanding, 2. Statistical learning might underlie emotion recognition in older adults,
3. Working memory underlies younger adults statistical learning, 4. Older adults will
have higher RWA due to age-related declines in social understanding performance. 5.
Better cognitive ability in older adults will result in better performance on the Cyberball
task. Younger adults were better on all cognitive and social understanding measures,
except for statistical learning. There were correlations between cognitive functions and
a decline in social understanding. After controlling for cognitive decline there was still
an age-related decline in social understanding. For both young and older adults, there
were associations between RWA and ToM, whereby higher RWA scores correlated
with poorer ToM ability. Finally, older adults’ ability to judge the number of passes
they had received in the Cyberball task was correlated with a better working memory
and less sensitivity to rejection. Findings from this study reveal interesting links
between cognition and social understanding that future research should examine further.