Key words: perspective taking, age differences, motivational trigger hypothesis, experimental manipulation / Moreover, in Experiment 2, with a distance manipulation, both younger and older adults showed impaired performance in emotion recognition. Findings from these two experiments supported the Motivational Trigger Hypothesis , such that the well-documented poor performance in perspective taking tasks of older adults might be due to a lack of motivation instead of a lack of ability to perform in laboratory settings. In daily contexts, especially with someone close to them, older adults might be more motivated to take others' perspective and thus perform better on the perspective-taking tasks. / There was a folk notion of increased perspective taking abilities with age, such that older adults should be better at understanding others' behavior and intention, and show greater empathy to others. However, empirical studies on older adults showed the reverse pattern. In a series of experiments, I investigated the phenomenon from a motivational perspective. In Experiment 1, I manipulated perceived closeness between participants and the experimenter in a faux pas recognition task, and in Experiment 2, I manipulated perceived closeness as well as distance between participants and the target in an emotion recognition task, to examine whether the experimental manipulations could influence participants' performance in the two perspective taking tasks. The results revealed that in the control condition without any experimental manipulation, the well-documented negative age effect was only replicated in both faux pas recognition and emotion recognition. However, in the closeness manipulation condition, older adults significantly enhanced their performance in both tasks, such that they now performed at a comparable level with younger adults; whereas younger adults did not show such enhancement effects. / Zhang, Xin. / Advisers: Helene Fung; Alan Wong. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-06, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-92). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:cuhk.edu.hk/oai:cuhk-dr:cuhk_344862 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Contributors | Zhang, Xin, Chinese University of Hong Kong Graduate School. Division of Psychology. |
| Source Sets | The Chinese University of Hong Kong |
| Language | English, Chinese |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, theses |
| Format | electronic resource, microform, microfiche, 1 online resource (ix, 92 leaves : ill.) |
| Rights | Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International” License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) |
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