The Influence of Older Age, Individual Differences in Cognitive Abilities, and State of Mind on Learning Novel Categories

Objectives: Category learning involves learning group items based on their common features, and it is a key ability that allows us to acquire new concepts and skills throughout our lives. Yet we know little about the traits and situational factors that facilitate category learning and how those differ in older age. Here, we test the relationship between categorization performance and individual differences in a variety of cognitive abilities and aspects of state of mind and how those relationships differ in older age.Method: Seventy-six young adults (18-29 years old) and 73 older adults (60-83 years old) underwent a cognitive assessment testing processing speed, working memory, verbal comprehension, and perceptual reasoning. Two experimental sessions followed where participants completed a categorization task and state of mind questionnaires assessing stress, motivation, mood, and sleep. Results: Verbal comprehension and processing speed were significant positive predictors of categorization performance. This effect was not moderated by age groups. None of the state of mind variables was a significant predictor of categorization performance, and there were no significant age moderation effects on state of mind. Discussion: We show that baseline cognitive abilities had stronger influence on category learning than state of mind variables regardless of age. Thus, interventions aimed at supporting learning new concepts in later life may be more effective to strengthen stable traits rather than attempt to directly manipulate transient states of mind.