The author investigated whether the ability to shift mental sets as defined by Goldstein and Scheerer (1941) and measured by the ability to detect sequence changes in a film, is associated with the degree of social relatedness that older people have with society. 76 subjects, 16 men and 60 women, aged 60 to 88 yr., were administered a questionnaire whose items were designed to measure social, personality and demographic variables. The subjects were also participants in a perceptual task. The trend of the findings suggests a relationship between efficiency of psychological functioning on a perceptual task and degree of interpersonal relatedness.
