Age-Related Decline in Mentalizing Skills Across Adult Life Span

In the literature, there are few and conflicting reports regarding age-related changes in adult mentalizing abilities: whereas Happe et al. (1998, Developmental Psychology, 34, 358-362) showed better performances of elderly compared with young subjects in an advanced theory of mind (ToM) task, Mayor et al. (2002, British Journal of Psychology, 93, 465-485) and Sullivan and Ruffmann (2004, British Journal of Psychology, 95(Pt 1), 1-18) found an age-related decline. Former studies addressing the issue compared young to elderly subjects and did not investigate earlier changes in middle-aged adults. To shed light on changes in ToM skills along adulthood, the authors used the revised version of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42, 241-251) to compare four groups of people of different ages covering the whole span of adult life. The authors found aged-related decline in ToM skills as early as the fifth decade of life. Awareness of the age-related changes in adult mentalizing is important to differentiate normal aging effects from ToM impairments due to neuropsychiatric diseases.