Enhancing cognition in older adults also
changes personality
January 26, 2012 A program designed to
boost cognition in older adults also
increased their openness to new experiences,
researchers report, demonstrating for the
first time that a non-drug intervention in
older adults can change a personality trait
once thought to be fixed throughout the
lifespan.
Personality psychologists describe openness
as one of five major personality traits.
Studies suggest that the other four traits
(agreeableness, conscientiousness,
neuroticism and extraversion) operate
independently of a person's cognitive
abilities.
But openness being flexible and creative,
embracing new ideas and taking on
challenging intellectual or cultural
pursuits does appear to be correlated with
cognitive abilities.
The new study, published in the journal Psychology
and Aging, gave older adults a series of
pattern-recognition and problem-solving
tasks and puzzles that they could perform at
home.
Participants ranged in age from 60 to 94
years and worked at their own pace, getting
more challenging tasks each week when they
came to the lab to return materials.
"We wanted participants to feel challenged
but not overwhelmed," said University of
Illinois educational psychologyand Beckman Institute professor Elizabeth Stine-Morrow, who led the research.
"While we didn't
explicitly test this, we suspect that the
training program adapted in difficulty in
sync with skill development was important
in leading to increased openness. Growing
confidence in their reasoning abilities
possibly enabled greater enjoyment of
intellectually challenging and creative
endeavors."
Researchers tested the cognitive abilities
and personality traits of 183 older adults,
randomly assigned to either an experimental
group who participated in a cognitive
intervention or a control group who did not.
They were tested a few weeks before the
intervention and afterwards.
At the end of the program, those who had
engaged in the training and practice
sessions saw improvement in their
pattern-recognition and problem-solving
skills, while those in the control group did
not. And those who improved in these
inductive reasoning skills also demonstrated
a moderate but significant increase in
openness.
This study challenges the assumption that
personality doesn't change once one reaches
adulthood, said Illinoispsychology professor and study
co-author Brent Roberts.
"There are certain models that say,
functionally, personality doesn't change
after age 20 or age 30. You reach adulthood
and pretty much you are who you are," he
said.
"There's some truth to that at some level.
But here you have a study that has
successfully changed personality traits in a
set of individuals who are (on average) 75.
And that opens up a whole bunch of wonderful
issues to think about."
