Funzionamento sociale nell'invecchiamento: il ruolo della reciprocità.

Reciprocity, defined as the strategy of conditioning one’s behavior on the previous behavior of another interaction partner, is a crucial ability in an individual’s social life. Nonetheless, its relationship to social functioning and social cognition is still relatively unexplored. In the current study, we administer reciprocity tasks, together with Theory of Mind, and cognitive tasks to a population of young adults (18 – 35) and old adults (65 - 89). The reciprocity task tested for both objective direct reciprocity and subjective generalized beliefs of reciprocity. The aim of the study was to elucidate the role of reciprocity in the age-related decline of cognitive functioning. Furthermore, we were interested in the relationship between reciprocity and other aspects of social functioning and social cognition like Theory of Mind. The results showed that while reciprocity does decline in old age, this decline cannot be assumed separately from a more general cognitive decline. On the contrary, ToM deterioration in old age does seem to happen independently of a decline in cognitive abilities. Finally, the performance of both the young and the old group between ToM and reciprocity tasks were significantly correlated, thus hinting at a possible positive relationship between these two important constructs.