Abstract
This chapter investigates whether older adults suffer differential impairment of executive function when experiencing happy or sad mood states. It further examines whether planning performance on the Tower of London (TOL) in older adults was more impaired by induced positive and negative mood compared with young adults. In relation to aging effects, older adults are more likely than young adults to adopt heuristic rather than systematic processing strategies for at least some types of realistic problem solving task. If changes in frontal lobe functioning underlie both age and mood effects on the TOL task, then induced positive or negative mood could substantially impair planning for older adults. Analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) indicated that differences in mental planning time might indeed have influenced mood effects on move estimation. The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) was used to measure mood states at three time points during the experiment.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Studies of Thinking |
| Subtitle of host publication | Selected works of Kenneth Gilhooly |
| Publisher | Taylor and Francis Inc. |
| Chapter | 5 |
| Pages | 67-86 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781317535485 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781138848870 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 3 Jul 2015 |