| With the increase of the elderly population, aging has become the focus of mainconcerns. This study reports three behavioral experiments to measure the aging effect inself-processing by using recently developed self-associative approach. In Experiment1, weuse shape-label matching paradigm (geometry were randomly assigned to three person-self, a friend, or a stranger) to examine whether the elderly (over60years) participantswere able to make faster responses to shapes associated with themselves compared withthose associated with close others, and whether there was enhanced self-bias relative toyoung participants. The data demonstrated a reliable increased self-advantage effect in theelderly than young participants. In order to test whether this enhanced effect was driven bythe self-information linked to the intrinsic high-reward in aging group, in Experiment2, wehad participants (young vs. old) perform a reward associative task (three geometric shapesassociated with different reward values-ï¿¥16,ï¿¥4, orï¿¥1). The result showed that bothyoung and old groups had faster responses to the high-than to the low-reward associations,the magnitude of reward-bias were comparable in both groups.. In order to verify theeffects observed in Experiments1and2, we employed a shape-perception paradigm to testthe relations between self-and reward-advantage in terms of the perspective of informationprocessing. This approach allowed us to examine where the enhanced self-bias in aginggroup comes from and whether reward-processing is an important factor to drive self-biasin behavior. The dissociation between self-and reward-bias indicated that the increasedself-advantage in aging group was unlikely driven by the reward-related. In conclusion, theresults indicated that: the elderly demonstrated enhanced self-processing advantage effectcompared to the young people; the cognitive mechanism of self processing is differentfrom reward processing for the elderly. |
