Strategies and Cognitive Aging : The Role of Emotions – StratAgEm

In all cognitive domains, emotions influence either positively or negatively cognitive performance. Moreover, emotion-cognition interactions change during aging: Some effects of emotion on cognition decrease with age, others increase. However, we ignore the underlying age-related changes in emotion-cognition interactions. To address this issue, we shall test the original strategic variations hypothesis. Effects of emotion on cognition are mediated by differences in strategies and in how participants use, execute, and select strategies. Also age-related changes in emotion-cognition relations are driven by changes in strategic variations. We shall carry a series of experiments in two cognitive domains (episodic memory and arithmetic) and collect a variety of behavioral (latency, accuracy, strategy use) and brain-imaging (MEG and EEG) data. The data will have important implications on our understanding of emotion-cognition links and age-related differences therein.