Abstract
Some of recent studies have been focused on cognitive task performances affected by emotion and motivation. In this study, we hypothesized that emphasis of errors may improve older adults’ cognitive task performances, based on the regulatory fit hypothesis (Maddox & Markman, 2010), because older adults’ motivation were observed to shift from promotion focus to prevention focus (Ebner, Freud & Baltes, 2006). We used our new-breakfast-task (Harada & Okawa, 2014), which demanded to a participant cook 3 kinds of foods for multiple guests, and compared performances between the GAIN task group (gaining bonus for their works), the LOSS task group (losing rewards in accordance to their errors), and the CONTROL group (no reward conditions instructed). Results showed that one type of errors decreased in older adults in the LOSS task group, however other kinds of errors were not changed even though those errors were related to the tasks which needs cognitive flexibility. It is necessary to investigate the mechanism under effects of “regulatory fit”.
