Abstract

The effects of aging on the cognitive and affective dimensions of theory of mind , and on the latter’s links with other cognitive processes, such as information processing speed, executive functions and episodic memory, are still unclear. We therefore investigated these effects in young , middle-aged and older adults , using separate subjective and objective assessment tasks. Furthermore, a novel composite task probed participants’ abilities to infer both cognitive and affective mental states in an interpersonal context. Although age affected the objective ToM tests, results revealed a direct aging effect on the second-order ToM, but an indirect one on the first-order cognitive ToM, mediated mainly by age-related declines in executive functions. This study supports the notion of an age-related distinction between subjective and objective assessments of ToM, and confirms that ToM is a complex mental ability with several characteristics reliant to some extent on executive processes