The research conducted in the Cognition Laboratory focuses primarily on age-related changes in cognitive processes. At the present time, we are investigating whether older adults' judgment and decision making skills differ from those of young adults. At a very basic level, making a judgment or decision involves obtaining information and processing this information to reach a conclusion. We make many judgments and decisions over a lifetime, so it seems fair to say that given a lifetime of experience, older adults should know the rules and procedures (i.e., the "how") for making judgments as well as, if not better than, young adults. Indeed, the combination of "expert" judgment skills with extensive world knowledge may be responsible for what we perceive as the greater "wisdom" of the elderly.
Memory can also play an important role in the judgment process. For example, information that is pertinent to a judgment may be present in the immediate environment, but is more often retrieved from memory. We know from prior research that some aspects of memory decline with increasing age (e.g., recollection of novel information or recent events), whereas others remain relatively intact (e.g., retrieval of factual knowledge, repetition priming). We are studying how this pattern of intact and impaired memory affects older adults' judgment and decision making ability. Findings from our recent experiments indicate that when a judgment task requires minimal involvement of memory or when the task draws on memory processes that are unaffected by increasing age, older adults perform as accurately as young adults. On the other hand, older adults' judgments are less accurate and more biased than those of young adults when a judgment task involves memory processes that decline with age.
Selected Publications
Mutter, S. A., Strain, L. M., & Plumlee, L.F. (in press). The role of age and belief in contingency judgment. Memory and Cognition.
Mutter, S.A., Haggbloom, S.J., Plumlee, L.F., & Schirmer, A.R. (2006). Aging, working memory, and discrimination learning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 59 (9), 1556-1566.
Mutter, S.A., Naylor, J.C., & Patterson, E.R. (2005). The effects of age and task context on Stroop task performance. Memory & Cognition, 33, 514-530.
Mutter, S.A., & Williams, T.W. (2004). Aging and the detection of contingency in causal learning. Psychology and Aging, 19, 13-26.
Mutter, S.A. (2000). Illusory correlation and group impression formation in young and older adults. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 55B, P224-P237.
Mutter, S.A., & Goedert, K.M. (1997). Frequency discrimination vs. frequency estimation: Adult age differences and the effect of divided attention. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 52B, P319-P328.
Mutter, S.A., & Pliske, R.M. (1996). Judging event covariation: Effects of age and memory demands. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 51B, P70-P80.
Pliske, R.M., & Mutter, S.A. (1996). Age differences in the accuracy of confidence judgments. Journal of Experimental Aging Research, 22, 199-216.
Mutter, S.A., Lindsey, S.E., & Pliske, R.M. (1995). Aging and the truth effect in judgments of validity. Aging and Cognition, 2, 89-107.
Mutter, S.A., & Pliske, R.A. (1994). Aging and illusory correlation in judgments of co-occurrence. Psychology and Aging, 9, 53-63.
Mutter, S., Howard, J.H., Jr., & Howard, D.V. (1994). Serial pattern learning after head injury. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 16, 271-288.
Howard, J.H., Jr., Mutter, S.A., & Howard, D.V. (1992). Serial pattern learning by event observation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 18, 1029-1039.
For More Information
If you are interested in obtaining research experience in the area of aging cognition, or if you would like more information about this topic, please contact Dr. Sharon Mutter (Office: 222 Tate Page Hall; ph.#: (502) 745-4389; e-mail sharon.mutter@wku.edu
Last Modified: August 30, 2006