problem-solving

In October I reported on a study that found older adults did better than younger adults on a decision-making task that reflected real-world situations more closely than most tasks used in such studies. It was concluded that, while (as previous research has shown) younger adults may do better on simple decision-making tasks, older adults have the edge when it comes to more complex scenarios. Unsurprisingly, this is where experience tells.

Last year I reported on another study, showing that poorer decisions by older adults reflected specific attributes, rather than age per se. Specifically, processing speed and memory are behind individual differences in decision-making performance. Both of these processes, of course, often get worse with age.

What these two studies suggest is that your ability to make good decisions depends a lot on whether

• you have sufficient time to process the information you need,
• your working memory is up to the job of processing all the necessary information, and
• your long-term memory is able to provide any information you need from your own experience.

One particular problem for older adults, for example, that I have discussed on many occasions, is source memory — knowing the context in which you acquired the information. This can have serious consequences for decision-making, when something or someone is remembered positively when it should not, because the original negative context has been forgotten.

But the trick to dealing with memory problems is to find compensation strategies that play to your strengths. One thing that improves with age is emotion regulation. As we get older, most of us get better at controlling our emotions, and using them in ways that make us happier. Moreover, it appears that working memory for emotional information (in contrast to other types of information) is unaffected by age. Given new research suggesting that decision-making is not simply a product of analytic reasoning processes, but also involves an affective/experiential process that may operate in parallel and be of equal importance, the question arises: would older adults be better relying on emotion (their ‘gut’) for decisions?

In Scientific American I ran across a study looking into this question. 60 younger (aged 18-30) and 60 older adults (65-85) were presented with health care choices that required them to hold in mind and consider multiple pieces of information. The choices were among pairs of health-care plans, physicians, treatments, and homecare aides. Working memory load increased across trials from one to four attributes per option. On each trial, one option had a higher proportion of positive to negative attributes. Each attribute had a positive and negative variant (e.g., “dental care is fully covered” vs “dental care is not covered”).

In the emotion-focus condition participants were asked to focus on their emotional reactions to the options and report their feelings about the options before making a choice. In the information-focus condition, participants were told to focus instead on the specific attributes and report the details about the options. There were no such instructions in the control condition.

As expected, working memory load had a significant effect on performance, but what’s interesting is the different effects in the various conditions. In the control condition, for both age groups, there was a dramatic decrease in performance when the cognitive load increased from 2 items to 4, but no difference between those in which the load was 4, 6, or 8 items. In the information-focus condition, the younger group showed a linear (but not steep) decrease in decision-making performance with each increase in load, except at the last — there was no difference between 6 and 8 items. The older group showed a dramatic drop when load was increased from 2 to 4, no difference between 4 and 6, and a slight drop when items increased to 8. In the emotion-focus condition, both groups showed the same pattern they had shown in the information-focus condition, except that, for the younger group, there was a dramatic drop when items increased to 8.

So that’s one point: that the effect of cognitive load is modified by instructional condition, and varies by age.

The other point, of course, concerns how level of performance varies. Interestingly, in the control condition, the two age groups performed at a similar level. In the information-focus condition, the slight superiority of the younger group when the load was lightest expanded significantly as soon as the number of items increased to four, and was greatest at the highest load. In the emotion-focus condition, however, the very slight superiority of the younger group at two items did not increase as the load increased, and indeed reversed when the load increased to eight.

Here’s what I think are the most interesting results of this study:

There was no significant difference in performance between the age groups when no instruction was given.

Younger adults were better off being given some instruction, but when the cognitive load was not too great (2, 4, 6 items), there was no difference for them in focusing on emotions or details. The difference — and it was a significant one — came when the load was highest. At this point, they were much better to concentrate on the details and apply their reasoning abilities.

Older adults, on the other hand, were better off, always but especially when the load was highest, in focusing on their feelings.

Performance on a digit-symbol coding task (a measure of processing speed) correlated significantly with performance in the information-focus condition for both age groups. When processing speed was taken into account, the difference between the age groups in that condition disappeared. In other words, younger adults' superior performance in the information-focus condition was entirely due to their higher processing speed. However, age differences in the emotion-focus condition were unaffected.

Younger adults performed significantly better in the information-focus condition compared to the control condition, indicating that specific instructions are helpful. However, there was no significant difference between the emotion-focus condition and the control for the older adults, suggesting perhaps that such processing is their ‘default’ approach.

The findings add weight to the idea that there is a separate working memory system for emotion-based information.

It should be noted that, somewhat unusually, the information was presented to participants sequentially rather than simultaneously. It may well be that these results do not apply to the situation in which you have all the necessary information presented to you in a document and can consider it at your leisure. On the other hand, in the real world we often amass information over time, or acquire it by listening rather than seeing it all nicely arrayed in front of us.

The findings suggest that the current emphasis on providing patients with all available information in order to make an “informed choice” may be misplaced. Many older patients may be better served by a greater emphasis on emotional information, rather than being encouraged to focus on myriad details.

But I'd like to see this experiment replicated using a simultaneous presentation. It may be that these findings should principally be taken as support for always seeking written documentation to back up spoken advice, or, if you're gathering information over time and from multiple sources, making sure you have written notes for each instance. Personally, I dislike making any decisions based solely on information given in conversation, and this is a reluctance I have found increasing steadily with age (and I'm not that old yet!).

I recently reported on a finding that older adults whose life-space narrowed to their immediate home were significantly more likely to have a faster rate of global cognitive decline or develop mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s.

Now there are some obvious correlates of being house-bound vs feeling able to travel out of town (such as physical disability), but this relationship between cognitive decline and confined life-space remained after such factors were taken into account. The association is thought to be related to social and mental stimulation.

But I think this association also points to something more specific: the importance of distance, and difference. Different ways of thinking; different contexts. Information (in the broadest sense of the word) that stretches your mind, that gets you out of the grooves of your familiar thoughts.

Last year I reported on a study looking at creativity in problem-solving. That study found that multicultural experiences help you become more creative in solving problems. In particular, creativity was best helped by being reminded of what you’d learned about the underlying meaning or function of behaviors in the multicultural context. In other words, what was important was truly trying to understand behavior that’s very different from your own.

While travelling undoubtedly helps, you don’t need to go to a distant place to learn about different cultures. You can read about them; you can watch movies; you can listen to other people talk about what they know. And if you have those experiences, you can then think about them at any time.

A vital tool in tackling cognitive decline in old age (including the more extreme events of mild cognitive impairment and dementia) is cognitive reserve. Cognitive reserve means that your brain can take more damage before it has noticeable effects. Many people have died with advanced Alzheimer’s pathology in their brain who showed no signs of dementia in life!

Cognitive reserve is most often associated with education, but it is also associated with occupation, bilingualism, and perhaps even music. What it comes down to is this: the more redundancy in your brain, the wider and denser the networks, the more able your brain will be to find new paths for old actions, if the old paths are damaged.

The finding that life-space can affect cognitive decline is also a reminder that we are minds in bodies. I have reported on a number of examples of what is called embodied cognition (the benefits of gesture for memory are one example of this). It’s a good general principle to bear in mind — if you fake enjoyment, you may well come to feel it; if you look at the distant hills or over the sea, your mind may think distant thoughts; if you write out your worries, the weight of them on your mind may well lighten.

I made reference to bilingualism. There have been several studies now, that point to the long-term benefits of bilingualism for fighting cognitive decline and dementia. But if you are monolingual, don’t despair. You may never achieve the fluency with another language that you would have if you’d learned it earlier in life, but it’s never too late to gain some benefit! If you feel that learning a new language is beyond you, then you’re thinking of it in the wrong way.

Learning a language is not an either-or task; you don’t have to achieve near-native fluency for there to be a point. If there’s a language you’ve always yearned to know, or a culture you’ve always been interested in, dabble. There are so many resources on the Web nowadays; there has never been a better time to learn a language! You could dabble in a language because you’re interested in a culture, or you could enhance your language learning by learning a little about an associated culture.

And don’t forget that music and math are languages too. It may be too late to become a cello virtuoso, but it’s never too late to learn a musical instrument for your own pleasure. Or if that’s not to your taste, take a music appreciation class, and enrich your understanding of the language of music.

Similarly with math: there’s a thriving little world of “math for fun” out there. Go beyond Sudoku to the world of math puzzles and games and quirky facts.

Perhaps even dance should be included in this. I have heard dance described as a language, and there has been some suggestion that dancing seems to be a physical pursuit of particular cognitive benefit for older adults.

This is not simply about ‘stimulation’. It’s about making new and flexible networks. Remember my recent report on learning speed and flexible networks? The fastest learners were those whose brains showed more flexibility during learning, with different areas of the brain being linked with different regions at different times. The key to that, I suggest, is learning and thinking about things that require your brain to forge many new paths, with speed and distance being positive attributes that you should seek out (music and dance for speed, perhaps; languages and travel for distance).

Interestingly, research into brain development has found that, as a child grows to adulthood, the brain switches from an organization based on local networks based on physical proximity to long-distance networks based on functionality. It would be interesting to know if seniors with cognitive impairment show a shrinking in their networks. Research has shown that the aging brain does tend to show reduced functional connectivity in certain high-level networks, and this connectivity can be improved with regular aerobic exercise, leading to cognitive improvement.

Don’t disdain the benefits of simply daydreaming in your armchair! Daydreaming has been found to activate areas of the brain associated with complex problem-solving, and it’s been speculated that mind wandering evokes a unique mental state that allows otherwise opposing networks to work in cooperation. Daydreaming about a more distant place has also been found to impair memory for recently learned words more than if the daydreaming concerned a closer place — a context effect that demonstrates that you can create distance effects in the privacy of your own mind, without having to venture to distant lands.

I’m not saying that such daydreaming has all the benefits of actually going forth and meeting people, seeing new sights. Watching someone practice helps you learn a skill, but it’s not as good as practicing yourself. But the point is, whatever your circumstances, there is plenty you can do to stretch your mind. Why not find yourself a travel book, and get started!

We must believe that groups produce better results than individuals — why else do we have so many “teams” in the workplace, and so many meetings. But many of us also, of course, hold the opposite belief: that most meetings are a waste of time; that teams might be better for some tasks (and for other people!), but not for all tasks. So what do we know about the circumstances that make groups better value?

A recent study involving some 700 people, working on a wide variety of tasks in small groups (two to five), found that much of the difference between groups’ performance (specifically, around 40% of the variation in performance) could be explained by a measure called “collective intelligence”.

It was called that (I assume) on the basis that it was such an important factor in predicting performance on such a wide range of tasks (from visual puzzles to negotiations, brainstorming, games and complex rule-based design assignments). But the intriguing thing about this collective intelligence is that it didn’t seem to reflect the individual intelligence of the groups’ members. Instead, the most important factor in a group’s collective intelligence appeared to be how well its members worked together.

There were two (or three) factors that seem particularly important for this. The main one is the “social sensitivity” of the members — meaning how well the individuals perceive each others’ emotions. The number of women in the group also enhanced collective intelligence, but this may not be a separate factor — it may simply reflect the tendency for women to be more socially sensitive.

The other factor was the extent to which everyone contributed — groups where one person dominated were less collectively intelligent. This fits in with a review of workplace teams that found that teams that spent time sharing new information performed better overall in their tasks — even though a lot of the information was already known by everyone in the group. (Although it must be added that bringing in new information was even better!). It also fits in with the same review’s finding that teams whose members had more similar backgrounds tended to share more information than those with greater diversity.

That’s a depressing finding, but it’s not insoluble.

The review (which looked at studies totally some 4800 groups, involving over 17,000 people) also found that teams communicate better when they engage in tasks where they are instructed to come up with a correct / best answer rather than a consensual solution.

Previous research (see reports here and here) has suggested that brainstorming actually produces fewer ideas than would be produced by the same individuals working individually, and that groups working together to remember something recall more poorly than the same individuals would working on their own. One big reason for these findings, it is thought, is that hearing other people's ideas disrupts your own retrieval strategy. However, this is less likely to occur in a structured situation, where turns are taken.

So groups can have inhibitory effects (which are apparently worse when the information being recalled is more complex), and it seems likely that is one of the problems that social sensitivity helps fight against. And indeed, previous research has indicated that, when the meeting is unstructured, with everyone chipping in as they feel like it, the specificity of the suggestions is important — with this being affected by how well the group members know each other. (If turns are taken, on the other hand, it is waiting time that’s important.)

Another recent report (which I reported on a few weeks ago, which is what triggered this post), found that although two people working together can make better decisions than either one could make alone, this is only true when the participants were able to accurately judge their level of confidence in their information. If one of them is working off inaccurate information and doesn’t realize that it is inaccurate, then (unsurprisingly!) the one with accurate information is better off without him.

Again, we can surmise that a group where members know each other well is one where they have a good understanding of the confidence they can put in each other’s judgments and claims.

Perhaps relatedly, another study indicates that problems can be exacerbated when information is shared, if the people have different viewpoints. People mentally organize information in different ways, and cues that help one person recall may inhibit another.

So where does all this leave us?

How effective a group is depends a lot on how attuned its members are to each other’s emotions and capabilities. Information sharing is a positive process that enhances group productivity even when the information is already familiar to members, and therefore strategies to encourage information sharing are useful.

There are three classes of strategies that could be used:

• Providing structure to the discussions (e.g. taking turns, setting time limits, having a moderator that encourages suggestions to be specific and novel)
• Providing instruction in how to become more socially sensitive (e.g. learning about physical cues to emotion)
• Encouraging informal conversation and “team-building” exercises that help team members become more familiar with each other (bearing in mind that the point of such exercises is to help members become more aware of each other’s emotions and capabilities, and designing them accordingly).

The first of these strategies is most important for groups who have come together for a specific occasion, or only meet rarely. The second of these is useful for individuals who are (as most everyone is!) going to sometimes work collaboratively — that is, it is not dependent on a particular group. The third class of strategies is useful for long-term groups.

In all these cases, such strategies are most needed when a group contains more diverse members, who are not well-known to each other.

There is also a fourth class of strategy, that relates to assessing the effectiveness of group collaboration for particular tasks. For example, the difficulty or complexity of the task is an important factor — more complex tasks are more efficiently learned or processed by groups, while low-complexity tasks are better left to individuals. But greater complexity also requires a group that works well together.

Type of task is another likely factor. For example, organizational or memory retrieval tasks may be best left to individuals or small, similarly-inclined groups in the early stages, because our ways of approaching these tasks is quite idiosyncratic and can be hampered by contrary approaches. Of course, diversity is needed at a later stage to ensure thoroughness and/or wide applicability.