Error awareness : assessment and changes with normal ageing

Court, Kate A (2005) Error awareness : assessment and changes with normal ageing. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Record type: Thesis (Doctoral)

Abstract

Awareness is a complex psychological phenomenon, commonly affected by frontal lobe neuropathologies such as traumatic brain injury (TBI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). There is not as yet a consensus, however, on how best to assess the extent to which awareness may be impaired.

This thesis comprises two papers. The first of these is a literature review paper that begins with a discussion of the different conceptualisations of awareness. The variety of methods currently being used to assess awareness are then critically discussed. Finally, the new idea of using event-related potential techniques (ERP) as a means of exploring error awareness is introduced.

The second paper aims to put this idea into practice, describing a study of error awareness in normal ageing, examined using an original combination of ERP techniques and psychological measures. Findings showed that people were able to detect errors as successfully as younger people, although there was evidence to suggest a weakening of the error detection system with age. Equally, no differences in error awareness were found. These findings are discussed within the context of normal ageing, and clinical implications are also considered.

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