Investigating Age Differences in the Influence of Joint Attention on Working Memory

Public Significance Statement Previous research has suggested that older adults make limited use of social cues compared to younger adults. However, research to date has been limited, only investigating effects on attention using simplistic social scenarios that lack ecological validity. Here, we investigated for the first time the effect of dynamic gaze cues of realistic human avatars on working memory and observed that both older and younger adults made use of the social cues and appeared to benefit from sharing attention. Interestingly, the interpretation and use of neutral gaze cues appeared to differ between age-groups, warranting further investigation. These findings question standard notions of age-related cognitive decline, adding to our understanding of social factors that may counteract such decline. Previous research has demonstrated that older adults make limited use of social cues as compared to younger adults. This has been investigated by testing the influence of gaze cues on attentional processes, with findings showing significantly smaller gaze-cuing effects for older than younger adults. Here, we aimed to investigate whether this would also result in age-related differences in the influence of gaze cues on working memory (WM). We therefore tested the effects of gaze cues from realistic human avatars on working memory across two experiments using dynamic head turns and more subtle eye gaze movements. We compared working memory for items looked at by the cue (congruent), looked away from by the cue (incongruent), and items shown when the cue looked down (neutral). Results demonstrated that for both older and younger adults, gaze cues influenced working memory processes, though there were some important differences related to the nature of the cue. When the cue made a dynamic head turn both younger and older adults showed an equivalent effect of gaze on attention. However, when only the eyes moved, while both the younger and older adults showed an effect of gaze on working memory, there appeared to be a difference in how the participants interpreted the neutral cue, with the older adults appearing to interpret the neutral cues in a similar way to the congruent cues. Overall, we provide important evidence that sharing attention benefits cognition across the life span.