Psychology and Aging via MedWorm.com

Age-related changes in detecting happiness: Discriminating between enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

The present study investigated age-related changes in the ability to discriminate between distinctions in the emotion underlying enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles, both when making explicit decisions about feelings of happiness and when making social judgments of approachability. No age differences were found in the ability to discriminate between these two types of smile. However, older adults demonstrated a greater bias toward reporting that any smiling individual was feeling happy. Older adults were also more likely to choose to approach an individual who was displaying a nonenjoyment smile. Implications of these findings for older adults’ interpersonal functioning are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

The effect of valence on young and older adults’ attention in a rapid serial visual presentation task.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Using a rapid serial visual presentation task, the authors examined how the emotional valence of a word affected young and older adults’ abilities to detect another word that closely followed it in temporal proximity. Both age groups detected neutral words better when such words followed a positive or negative arousing word rather than a neutral arousing word. These results suggest that emotion influences attention in a similar fashion for young and older adults. Despite evidence that older adults can sometimes show a “positivity effect” in memory, we found no evidence of increased attention toward positive words for older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

The effects of age in four alternative forced-choice item and associative recognition tasks.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Seventy-three young and 84 older adults were taught interactive imagery as a strategy for learning word pairs. In the control condition, participants viewed word pairs 1 at a time and formed an interactive image for each. In the experimental condition, participants first formed individual mental images for both the cue and the target and then formed an interactive image for the pair. Participants in both conditions then completed 4 alternative forced-choice item and associative recognition tasks that avoid influences of age differences in retrieval strategies such as recall-to-reject. Unlike findings with typical yes–no recognition tests, associative recognition was superior to item recognition in the control condition. This effect was attenuated in the experimental condition. Older adul...

You never lose the ages you’ve been: Affective perspective taking in older adults.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

In this study, we investigated potential awareness of the phenomenon by asking older people to recollect material from the perspective of a young person. Young and older participants listened to stories about 25- and 75-year-old main characters and then were asked to retell the stories from the perspective of the main characters. Older adults used relatively more positive than negative words when retelling from the perspective of a 75- versus 25-year-old. Young adults, however, used comparable numbers of positive and negative words regardless of perspective. These findings contribute to a growing literature that points to developmental gains in the emotion domain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

Are processing speed tasks biomarkers of cognitive aging?

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

We examined the association between 5 processing speed measures and general cognitive ability in a large (>900) sample of relatively healthy men and women at age 70. The processing speed tests were the Wechsler Digit Symbol-Coding and Symbol Search, simple reaction time, 4-choice reaction time, and inspection time. To inquire whether the processing speed tasks might be biomarkers of cognitive aging, we examined the attenuations in their associations with general cognitive ability after adjusting for cognitive ability measured almost 60 years earlier. With the exception of inspection time, the attenuations were substantial. Inspection time was the only processing speed measure—all of which were measured at age 70—whose correlation with cognitive ability at age 70 was significantly great...

Predicting conversion to dementia of the Alzheimer’s type in a healthy control sample: The power of errors in stroop color naming.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Discussion focuses on the accumulating evidence suggesting a role of attentional control mechanisms as an early marker for the transition from healthy cognitive aging to DAT. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

Aging and flexible remembering: Contributions of conceptual span, fluid intelligence, and frontal functioning.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Aging attenuates the capacity to adaptively and flexibly use episodic memory at different levels of specificity. Older and younger adults were tested on a picture recognition task that required them to make episodic memory decisions at an item-specific (verbatim) versus category-based (gist-based) level on randomly intermixed trials. Specificity modulation was assessed using a measure of the likelihood that participants retrieved verbatim information in order to reject test items that were categorically related to studied items under item-specific recognition instructions (recollection rejection). We found that this measure positively correlated with conceptual span (an index of short-term semantic memory) and with level of fluid intelligence in older and younger adults. However, when we s...

Learning to bypass the central bottleneck: Declining automaticity with advancing age.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Does advancing age reduce the ability to bypass the central bottleneck through task automatization? To answer this question, the authors asked 12 older adults and 20 young adults to first learn to perform an auditory–vocal task (low vs. high pitch) in 6 single-task sessions. Their dual-task performance was then assessed with a psychological refractory period paradigm, in which the highly practiced auditory–vocal task was presented as Task 2, along with an unpracticed visual–manual Task 1. Converging evidence indicated qualitative differences in dual-task performance with age: Whereas the vast majority of young adults bypassed the bottleneck, at most 1 of the 12 older adults was able to do so. Older adults are either reluctant to bypass the bottleneck (as a matter of strategy) or have...

Pay now or pay later: Aging and the role of boundary salience in self-regulation of conceptual integration in sentence processing.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Previous research has suggested that older readers may self-regulate input during reading differently from the way younger readers do, so as to accommodate age-graded change in processing capacity. For example, older adults may pause more frequently for conceptual integration. Presumably, such an allocation policy would enable older readers to manage the cognitive demands of constructing a semantic representation of the text by off-loading the products of intermediate computations to long-term memory, thus decreasing memory demands as conceptual load increases. This was explicitly tested in 2 experiments measuring word-by-word reading time for sentences in which boundary salience was manipulated but in which semantic content was controlled. With both a computer-based moving-window paradigm...

The social treatment: The benefits of group interventions in residential care settings.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

We report findings from an intervention study that investigates the impact of group reminiscence (GR) and individual reminiscence (IR) activities on older adults living in care settings. This research aimed to provide a theory-driven evaluation of reminiscence based on a social identity framework. This framework predicts better health outcomes for group-based interventions as a result of their capacity to create a sense of shared social identification among participants. A total of 73 residents, living in either standard or specialized (i.e., dementia) care units, were randomly assigned to one of three interventions: GR (n = 29), IR (n = 24), and a group control activity (n = 20). The intervention took place over 6 weeks, and cognitive screening and well-being measures were administered bo...

The structure of late-life depressive symptoms across a 20-year span: A taxometric investigation.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Past studies of the underlying structure of depressive symptoms have yielded mixed results, with some studies supporting a continuous conceptualization and others supporting a categorical one. However, no study has examined this research question with an exclusively older adult sample, despite the potential uniqueness of late-life depressive symptoms. In the present study, the underlying structure of late-life depressive symptoms was examined among a sample of 1,289 individuals across 3 waves of data collection spanning 20 years. The authors employed a taxometric methodology using indicators of depression derived from the Research Diagnostic Criteria (R. L. Spitzer, J. Endicott, & E. Robins, 1978). Maximum eigenvalue analyses and inchworm consistency tests generally supported a categorical...

Loneliness predicts increased blood pressure: 5-year cross-lagged analyses in middle-aged and older adults.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

In this study, we tested the hypothesis that the effect of loneliness accumulates to produce greater increases in systolic blood pressure (SBP) over a 4-year period than are observed in less lonely individuals. A population-based sample of 229 50- to 68-year-old White, Black, and Hispanic men and women in the Chicago Health, Aging, and Social Relations Study was tested annually for each of 5 consecutive years. Cross-lagged panel analyses revealed that loneliness at study onset predicted increases in SBP 2, 3, and 4 years later (B = 0.152, SE = 0.091, p < .05, one-tailed). These increases were cumulative such that higher initial levels of loneliness were associated with greater increases in SBP over a 4-year period. The effect of loneliness on SBP was independent of age, gender, race or eth...

Reactivity to daily stressors in adulthood: The importance of stressor type in characterizing risk factors.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

This study examined daily stressors in adults ages 18 to 89 years (M = 49.6 years) over 30 days. We examined the role of individual factors (i.e., age, self-concept differentiation [SCD], perceived control) in physical and psychological reactivity to interpersonal, network, home, and health stressors. Findings were consistent with the perspective that adults were less reactive to stress on days during which they felt in control and that younger adults and adults with high SCD were more vulnerable to stress. Age, SCD, and daily perceived control, however, interacted with one another, and findings varied by stressor type. For example, age differences in reactivity were moderated by SCD whereby older adults with low SCD were particularly resilient to home stressors. In addition, whether perce...

Does a helping hand mean a heavy heart? Helping behavior and well-being among spouse caregivers.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Being a caregiver for an ill or disabled loved one is widely recognized as a threat to the caregiver’s quality of life. Nonetheless, research indicates that helping behavior, broadly construed, promotes well-being. Could helping behavior in a caregiving context promote well-being as well? In the present study, we used ecological momentary assessment to measure active helping behavior and both positive and negative affect in 73 spouse caregivers. Results indicate that when controlling for care recipient illness status and functional impairment and caregiver “on call” caregiving time, active helping predicted greater caregiver positive affect—especially for individuals who perceived themselves as interdependent with their spouse. In addition, although both helping and on-call time pr...

Age differences in big five behavior averages and variabilities across the adult life span: Moving beyond retrospective, global summary accounts of personality.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

In 3 intensive cross-sectional studies, age differences in behavior averages and variabilities were examined. Three questions were posed: Does variability differ among age groups? Does the sizable variability in young adulthood persist throughout the life span? Do past conclusions about trait development, based on trait questionnaires, hold up when actual behavior is examined? Three groups participated: young adults (18–23 years), middle-aged adults (35–55 years), and older adults (65–81 years). In 2 experience-sampling studies, participants reported their current behavior multiple times per day for 1- or 2-week spans. In a 3rd study, participants interacted in standardized laboratory activities on 8 occasions. First, results revealed a sizable amount of intraindividual variability i...

Age and race differences in the trajectories of self-esteem.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

The purpose of this research was to assess age- and race-based variation in within-persons changes in self-esteem over a 16-year period. We used hierarchical linear modeling with data from 3,617 adults 25 years of age and older who were interviewed up to 4 times. Self-esteem increased, on average, over the course of the study period. At the same time, significant age variations around this trend were observed, with younger adults experiencing increases in self-esteem and older adults experiencing decreases. In general, race differences were not evident with respect to average levels or rates of change in self-esteem. However, a significant Age × Race interaction suggested that late-life declines in self-esteem were steeper for Blacks compared with Whites. These findings suggest the presen...

Everyday memory compensation: The impact of cognitive reserve, subjective memory, and stress.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

To determine the potential importance of several unexplored covariates of everyday memory compensation, the authors examined relations between responses on the Memory Compensation Questionnaire (a self-report measure of everyday memory compensation) and cognitive reserve (education and verbal IQ), subjective memory, and life stress in 66 older adults (mean age = 70.55 years). Key results indicated that compensation occurred in people (a) whose IQ level was greater than their education level (representing cognitive reserve “discordance”) but not in people whose IQ was commensurate with their education (representing cognitive reserve “concordance”); (b) who had greater perceived memory errors; and (c) who experienced heightened stress. Further, high-stress older adults compensated wh...

Cognitive engagement and cognitive aging: Is openness protective?

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

The purpose of this study was to examine whether openness to experience is related to longitudinal change in cognitive performance across advancing age. Participants were 857 individuals from the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging (SATSA). Factors for 5 cognitive domains were created, including verbal ability, spatial ability, memory, processing speed, and a global score, g. Latent growth curve models were used to assess level and longitudinal trajectories of cognitive performance. It was hypothesized that individuals who endorsed higher levels of openness would have higher cognitive test scores and lesser rates of cognitive decline. As predicted, higher openness to experience was associated with significantly higher performance across all cognitive tests for both men and women even afte...

Emotion regulation strategies and goals as predictors of older mothers’ and adult daughters’ helping-related subjective well-being.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

We examined emotion regulation (ER) in intergenerational helping relationships involving 77 older mother–adult daughter dyads. Participants’ ER strategies (passive, proactive) and ER goals (self-oriented, other oriented) were considered as predictors of their own and their partners’ satisfaction with, and their positive and negative affective reactions to, the helping relationship. For mothers and daughters, greater use of passive ER strategies predicted greater negative affect, lower satisfaction, and less positive affect for themselves, as well as partner reports of lower satisfaction and (for daughters only) greater negative affect. Mothers’ and daughters’ use of proactive strategies predicted lower negative affect for themselves, and daughters’ use of proactive ER strategie...

Emotion perception in Alzheimer’s disease and mood disorder in old age.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

In this study we investigated emotion perception skills involved in decoding facial expressions of emotion in healthy older adults, compared with those with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) or late-life mood disorder (MD). Although those with MD were mildly impaired in identifying emotional expressions, this was not caused by negative biases in choosing labels. Emotion decoding performance in AD was much more impaired, particularly when relatively subtle expressions were presented. Difficulties in choosing between labels to describe an emotional face were predicted by executive dysfunction, whereas impaired ability to match 2 emotional faces was related to general difficulties with face perception. Across all 3 groups, problems with emotion perception predicted quality of life independently of v...

Emotion regulation deficits in frontotemporal lobar degeneration and Alzheimer’s disease.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

We examined instructed and spontaneous emotion regulation in patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD, N = 32), which presents with profound emotional and personality changes; patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD, N = 17), which presents with profound memory impairment; and neurologically normal controls (N = 25). Participants were exposed to an aversive acoustic startle stimulus (115 dB) under 3 different conditions: (a) unwarned without instructions to down-regulate, (b) warned without instructions to down-regulate, and (c) warned with instructions to down-regulate. In the last 2 conditions, the warning took the form of a 20-s countdown. In all conditions, visible aspects of the startle response were assessed by measuring overall somatic activity and coding emotional faci...

Use of affective prosody by young and older adults.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

Emotion is conveyed in speech by semantic content (what is said) and by prosody (how it is said). Prior research suggests that older adults benefit from linguistic prosody when comprehending language but that they have difficulty understanding affective prosody. In a series of 3 experiments, young and older adults listened to sentences in which the emotional cues conveyed by semantic content and affective prosody were either congruent or incongruent and then indicated whether the talker sounded happy or sad. When judging the emotion of the talker, young adults were more attentive to the affective prosodic cues than to the semantic cues, whereas older adults performed less consistently when these cues conflicted. Participants’ reading and repetition of the sentences were recorded so that ...

Biased recognition of positive faces in aging and amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100

We investigated age differences in biased recognition of happy, neutral, or angry faces in 4 experiments. Experiment 1 revealed increased true and false recognition for happy faces in older adults, which persisted even when changing each face’s emotional expression from study to test in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3, we examined the influence of reduced memory capacity on the positivity-induced recognition bias, which showed the absence of emotion-induced memory enhancement but a preserved recognition bias for positive faces in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment compared with older adults with normal memory performance. In Experiment 4, we used semantic differentials to measure the connotations of happy and angry faces. Younger and older participants regarded happy faces as...

Individual differences and reliability of paired associates learning in younger and older adults.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:13 +0100

The authors modeled individual nonlinear trajectories of learning using structured latent growth curves based on an exponential function with 3 parameters: initial performance, learning rate, and asymptotic performance. The 3 parameters showed reliable individual differences and the between-parameter correlations indicated that participants with high learning rates recalled more items initially. The asymptotic performance was unrelated to the learning rate and the initial performance. In addition, age and speed of information processing were included in the analyses. Age mainly affected negatively the asymptotic and the initial performance whereas speed of information processing affected the learning rate positively. Reliability estimates based on 2 similar learning conditions were moderat...

Subconscious facial expression mimicry is preserved in older adulthood.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:10 +0100

It has been suggested that despite explicit recognition difficulties, implicit processing of facial expressions may be preserved in older adulthood. To directly test this possibility, the authors used facial electromyography to assess older (N = 40) and young (N = 46) adults’ mimicry responses to angry and happy facial expressions, which were presented subliminally via a backward masking technique. The results indicated that despite not consciously perceiving the facial emotion stimuli, both groups mimicked the angry and happy facial expressions. Implications for emotion recognition difficulties in late adulthood are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

Use of gaze for real-time mood regulation: Effects of age and attentional functioning.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:10 +0100

Older adults show positive preferences in their gaze toward emotional faces, and such preferences appear to be activated when older adults are in bad moods. This suggests that age-related gaze preferences serve a mood regulatory role, but whether they actually function to improve mood over time has yet to be tested. We investigated links between fixation and mood change in younger and older adults, as well as the moderating role of attentional functioning. Age × Fixation × Attentional Functioning interactions emerged such that older adults with better executive functioning were able to resist mood declines by showing positive gaze preferences. Implications for the function of age-related positive gaze preferences are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)...

Elevated false recollection of emotional pictures in young and older adults.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:10 +0100

Current theories predict opposing effects of emotionally arousing information on false memory. If emotion enhances true recollection, then false recollection might be lower for emotional than for neutral pictures. However, if emotion enhances conceptual relatedness, then false recollection might increase for nonstudied but emotionally related pictures. We contrasted these 2 factors in young and older adults, using the International Affective Pictures Systems set (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2005). Although both age groups used recollection in our task, false recollection was greatest for emotional pictures, supporting a conceptual relatedness account. Finally, even after accuracy differences were controlled, age was related to high-confidence false recollection of emotional pictures. (PsycI...

Working memory and aging: Separating the effects of content and context.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:10 +0100

In 3 experiments, we investigated the hypothesis that age-related differences in working memory might be due to the inability to bind content with context. Participants were required to find a repeating stimulus within a single series (no context memory required) or within multiple series (necessitating memory for context). Response time and accuracy were examined in 2 task domains: verbal and visuospatial. Binding content with context led to longer processing time and poorer accuracy in both age groups, even when working memory load was held constant. Although older adults were overall slower and less accurate than young adults, the need for context memory did not differentially affect their performance. It is therefore unlikely that age differences in working memory are due to specific a...

Effects of caregiver burden and satisfaction on affect of older end-stage renal disease patients and their spouses.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:09 +0100

We examined the extent to which a 2-factor model of affect explains how the burdens and satisfactions experienced by caregivers influence their own well-being and that of the spouses for whom they provide care. Using data from 315 older patients with end-stage renal disease and their spouses, we extended tests of Lawton et al.’s (1991) 2-factor model both longitudinally and dyadically. Multilevel modeling analyses partially support the 2-factor model. Consistent with the model, mean caregiver burden has a stronger effect on both caregiver and patient negative affect than does mean caregiver satisfaction. Contrary to the model, mean caregiver satisfaction has an effect on caregiver positive affect that is similar to that of mean caregiver burden, and it has no effect on patient positive a...

Perceptions of aging across 26 cultures and their culture-level associates.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:09 +0100

College students (N = 3,435) in 26 cultures reported their perceptions of age-related changes in physical, cognitive, and socioemotional areas of functioning and rated societal views of aging within their culture. There was widespread cross-cultural consensus regarding the expected direction of aging trajectories with (a) perceived declines in societal views of aging, physical attractiveness, the ability to perform everyday tasks, and new learning; (b) perceived increases in wisdom, knowledge, and received respect; and (c) perceived stability in family authority and life satisfaction. Cross-cultural variations in aging perceptions were associated with culture-level indicators of population aging, education levels, values, and national character stereotypes. These associations were stronger...

Aging and work: How do SOC strategies contribute to job performance across adulthood?

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:09 +0100

This article contributes to the understanding of working adults’ psychological adaptation to the process of aging and reveals the moderating role of task difficulty on the association between SOC strategies and performance outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

Aging and integration of contingency evidence in causal judgment.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:09 +0100

In this study, a feature analytic procedure (Mandel & Lehman, 1998) was used to determine whether this effect might be due to differences in young and older adults’ integration of contingency evidence during causal induction. To reduce the impact of age-related changes in learning/memory, the authors presented contingency evidence for preventative, noncontingent, and generative relationships in summary form; the meaningfulness of causal context was varied to induce participants to integrate greater or lesser amounts of this evidence. Young adults showed greater flexibility in their integration processes than did older adults. In an abstract causal context, there were no age differences in causal judgment or integration, but in meaningful contexts, young adults’ judgments for preventati...

Cognitive aging and the adaptive use of recognition in decision making.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:09 +0100

The recognition heuristic, which predicts that a recognized object scores higher on some criterion than an unrecognized one, is a simple inference strategy and thus an attractive mental tool for making inferences with limited cognitive resources—for instance, in old age. In spite of its simplicity, the recognition heuristic might be negatively affected in old age by too much knowledge, inaccurate memory, or deficits in its adaptive use. Across 2 studies, we investigated the impact of cognitive aging on the applicability, accuracy, and adaptive use of the recognition heuristic. Our results show that (a) young and old adults’ recognition knowledge was an equally useful cue for making inferences about the world; (b) as with young adults, old adults adjusted their use of the recognition he...

Effects of aging on experimentally instructed detached reappraisal, positive reappraisal, and emotional behavior suppression.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:09 +0100

Emotion regulation includes multiple strategies that rely on different underlying abilities and that may be affected differently by aging. We assessed young, middle-aged, and older adults’ ability to implement 3 emotion regulation strategies (detached reappraisal, positive reappraisal, and behavior suppression) in a laboratory setting, using standardized emotional stimuli and a multimethod approach to assessing regulation success. Results revealed age-related decline in ability to implement detached reappraisal, enhancement of ability to implement positive reappraisal, and maintenance of ability to implement behavior suppression. We discuss these findings in terms of their implications for emotion theory and for promoting successful aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all righ...

Emotional reactivity across the adult life span: The cognitive pragmatics make a difference.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:09 +0100

Previously, we found that during films about age-typical losses, older adults experienced greater sadness than young adults, whereas their physiological responses were just as large. In the present study, our goal was to replicate this finding and extend past work by examining the role of cognitive functioning in age differences in emotional reactivity. We measured the autonomic and subjective responses of 240 adults (age range = 20 to 70) while they viewed films about age-typical losses from our previous work. Findings were fully supportive of our past work: The magnitude of subjective reactions to our films increased linearly over the adult years, whereas there were no age differences on the level of physiological reactivity. We also found that the subjective reactions of adults with hig...

Intraindividual variability in positive and negative affect over 45 days: Do older adults fluctuate less than young adults?

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:08 +0100

We examined age differences in intraindividual variability of positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) and in contingencies among daily affect, daily stress, and daily events using up to 45 daily assessments of 18 young (20–30 years) and 19 older (70–80 years) adults. Whereas age groups differed little in average affect levels, older adults showed significantly less variability in PA and NA than young adults. Age differences accounted for greater variance in variability than personality factors. Multilevel modeling indicated that for young but not older adults, PA was higher (lower) on days with a positive (negative) event, and NA was lower on days with a positive event. There were no age differences in daily affect reactivity to appraised stress severity. (PsycINFO Database Recor...

Issues in intraindividual variability: Individual differences in equilibria and dynamics over multiple time scales.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:08 +0100

This article addresses three issues germane to experimental design and statistical analysis of intraindividual variability such as the articles contained within this special section. First, the time scale of the measurement of a process can have profound effects on the outcome of analyses of the resulting time series. Measurement in time poses special problems in the design of experiments: the time scale of the measurements must be appropriate for the time scale of the process. Second, deterministic and stochastic models should be fit at the individual level and only at a second level should individual differences in parameters be modeled. Third, one must consider the possibility that nomothetic relations may be exposed by the invariance of covariance between latent variables rather than w...

On the relation of mean reaction time and intraindividual reaction time variability.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:08 +0100

Researchers often statistically control for means when examining individual or age-associated differences in variances, assuming that the relation between the 2 is linear and invariant within and across individuals and age groups. We tested this assumption in the domain of working memory by applying variance-heterogeneity multilevel models to reaction times in the n-back task. Data are from the COGITO study, which comprises 101 younger and 103 older adults assessed in over 100 daily sessions. We found that relations between means and variances vary reliably across age groups and individuals, thereby contradicting the invariant linearity assumption. We argue that statistical control approaches need to be replaced by theoretical models that simultaneously estimate central tendency and disper...

Intraindividual change and variability in daily stress processes: Findings from two measurement-burst diary studies.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:08 +0100

There is little longitudinal information on aging-related changes in emotional responses to negative events. In the present article, we examined intraindividual change and variability in the within-person coupling of daily stress and negative affect using data from 2 measurement-burst daily diary studies. Three main findings emerged. First, average reactivity to daily stress increased longitudinally, and this increase was evident across most of the adult lifespan. Second, individual differences in emotional reactivity to daily stress exhibited long-term temporal stability, but this stability was greatest in midlife and decreased in old age. Third, reactivity to daily stress varied reliably within-persons (across-time), with individuals exhibiting higher levels of reactivity during times wh...

Interindividual differences and intraindividual variability in the cortisol awakening response: An examination of age and gender.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:08 +0100

This article shows age and gender differences in the magnitude and day-to-day variability of the cortisol awakening response (CAR) using a national sample of 1,143 adults who completed the second wave of the National Study of Daily Experiences, a part of the Midlife Development in the United States survey. Participants between the ages of 33 and 84 years completed 8 consecutive nightly interviews and provided 4 saliva samples (upon waking, 30 min after waking, before lunch, and before bed) on 4 consecutive interview days. Results revealed substantial day-to-day variability in the CAR as well as significant Age × Gender interactions, indicating that although no systematic age-related differences emerged for women, the magnitude and day-to-day variability of the CAR increased with age among...

Aging, time scales, and sensorimotor variability.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:08 +0100

It is well established that there is an increased amount of intraindividual variability with aging in a variety of behavioral contexts. Here, we elaborate from a self-organization and dynamic systems framework to investigate the relevant time scales of variability as a function of aging and their relation to the changes in the amount and structure (frequency and time domains) of movement and postural variability. In particular, we examine evidence for the general hypotheses that (a) there is a reduction or even loss of shorter time scales in the control of movement with aging and (b) the shorter the time scale in motor output variability, the more sensitive the measure is as a biomarker to revealing the onset and early influence of aging and disease. The dynamic analysis of the time scales...

Neural underpinnings of within-person variability in cognitive functioning.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:08 +0100

Increased intraindividual variability (IIV), reflecting within-person fluctuations in behavioral performance, is commonly observed in aging as well as in select disorders including traumatic brain injury, schizophrenia, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and dementia. Much recent progress has been made toward understanding the functional significance of IIV in cognitive performance (MacDonald, Nyberg, & Bäckman, 2006) and biological information processing (Stein, Gossen, & Jones 2005), with parallel efforts devoted to investigating the links between older adults’ deficient neuromodulation and their more variable neuronal and cognitive functions (Bäckman, Nyberg, Lindenberger, Li, & Farde, 2006). Despite these advances in the study of IIV, there has been little empirical e...

Time-structured and net intraindividual variability: Tools for examining the development of dynamic characteristics and processes.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:07 +0100

This article provides a descriptive frame for the combined study of intraindividual variability and aging/development. At the conceptual level, we show that the study of intraindividual variability provides access to dynamic characteristics—construct-level descriptions of individuals’ capacities for change (e.g., lability)—and to dynamic processes—the systematic changes that individuals exhibit in response to endogenous and exogenous influences (e.g., regulation). At the methodological level, we review how quantifications of net intraindividual variability and models of time-structured intraindividual variability are used to measure and describe dynamic characteristics and processes. At the research design level, we point to the benefits of measurement-burst study designs, wherein ...

Introduction to the special section on intraindividual variability and aging.

Psychology and Aging — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:07 +0100

This preface introduces articles that appear in the special section on intraindividual variability and aging and illustrate what intraindividual variability might contribute to the study of development. These articles exemplify the variety of conceptual perspectives, analytical methods, and types of data that are being used to study intraindividual variability and illustrate what the study of intraindividual variability might contribute to the study of development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

An Internet study of prospective memory across adulthood.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:45 +0100

In an Internet study, 73,018 18–79-year-olds were asked to “remember to click the smiley face when it appears.” A smiley face was present/absent at encoding, and participants were told to expect it “at the end of the test”/“later in the test.” In all 4 conditions, the smiley face occurred after 20 min of retrospective memory tests. Prospective remembering benefited at all ages from both prior target exposure and temporal uncertainty; moreover, it resembled working memory in its linear decline from young adulthood. The study demonstrates the power of Internet methodology to reveal age-related deficits in a single-trial prospective memory task outside the laboratory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

Aging, hearing acuity, and the attentional costs of effortful listening.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:45 +0100

A dual-task interference paradigm was used to investigate the effect of perceptual effort on recall of spoken word lists by young and older adults with good hearing and with mild-to-moderate hearing loss. In addition to poorer recall accuracy, listeners with hearing loss, especially older adults, showed larger secondary task costs while recalling the word lists even though the stimuli were presented at a sound intensity that allowed correct word identification. Findings support the hypothesis that extra effort at the sensory–perceptual level attendant to hearing loss has negative consequences to downstream recall, an effect that may be further magnified with increased age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

Eye movements and the perceptual span in older and younger readers.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:45 +0100

The size of the perceptual span (or the span of effective vision) in older readers was examined with the moving window paradigm (G. W. McConkie & K. Rayner, 1975). Two experiments demonstrated that older readers have a smaller and more symmetric span than that of younger readers. These 2 characteristics (smaller and more symmetric span) of older readers may be a consequence of their less efficient processing of nonfoveal information, which results in a riskier reading strategy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

Replicating the positivity effect in picture memory in Koreans: Evidence for cross-cultural generalizability.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:45 +0100

This study examined whether a relative preference for positive over negative material is also observed in older Koreans. Younger and older Korean participants viewed images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), were tested for recall and recognition of the images, and rated the images for valence. Cultural differences in the valence ratings of images emerged. Once considered, the relative preference for positive over negative material in memory observed in older Koreans was indistinguishable from that observed previously in older Americans. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

Attentional bias for threat in older adults: Moderation of the positivity bias by trait anxiety and stimulus modality.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:45 +0100

This study examined whether anxiety moderates the effect of the positivity bias on attention for threat. The authors employed the dot probe task to compare subliminal and supraliminal attention for threat in 103 young and 44 older adults. Regardless of anxiety, older but not young adults demonstrated a vigilant–avoidant response to angry faces. Anxiety influenced older adults’ attention such that anxious individuals demonstrated a vigilant–avoidant reaction to sad faces but an avoidant–vigilant reaction to negative words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

Aging and everyday judgments: The impact of motivational and processing resource factors.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:45 +0100

It has been hypothesized that reductions in cognitive resources might result in older adults engaging in less systematic processing than young adults when making everyday judgments. In 2 experiments, the authors tested individuals aged from 24 to 89 years to examine the degree to which task-related information associated with more superficial versus complex processing differentially influenced performance. They also examined the hypothesis that motivational factors would moderate age differences in processing complexity. In both studies, there were no age differences in the use of simple versus complex processing. Increasing age was, however, associated with increasing selectivity in cognitive resource engagement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psycho...

Thinking about my generation: Adaptive effects of a dual age identity in later adulthood.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:45 +0100

Growing old involves experiences of losses. Yet, it is not clear whether one’s cohort group membership poses a resource in later adulthood. The authors examined the role of a dual age identity (age group vs. generation) across adulthood and possible adaptive effects on future time perspective and well-being. Findings suggest that when generation membership is salient, older (but not young and middle-aged) participants display a stronger identification with same-aged people than when age group membership is salient. Additionally, results demonstrate that the dual age identity represents a significant component of the self-concept and well-being in older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

Five-factor model personality traits and the retirement transition: Longitudinal and cross-sectional associations.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:44 +0100

The authors examined associations between 5-factor personality traits and retirement in a diverse community sample. Longitudinal analyses (n = 367) compared personality trajectories of participants who remained employed and participants who retired. Personality at baseline did not predict future retirement, but compared to participants who remained employed, retirees increased in Agreeableness and decreased in Activity, a facet of Extraversion. In cross-sectional analyses among retirees (n = 144), those low in Neuroticism and high in Extraversion reported higher retirement satisfaction, and those high in Extraversion reported higher postretirement activity levels. Findings suggest that the trait perspective contributes to the understanding of the retirement process. (PsycINFO Database Reco...

Stability and change in retrospective reports of childhood experiences over a 5-year period: Findings from the Davis Longitudinal Study.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:44 +0100

This study examined the influence of demographic characteristics and current mood states on the reliability of reports of childhood experiences. The Child Experiences Scale (CES) was administered in 1996 and 2001 to participants in the Davis Longitudinal Study (N = 571; age range 22–61 years). Responses showed moderate to high cross-time reliability. Males were slightly more likely to change their responses. The influence of mood states was weak and more evident for global ratings of childhood than for specific experiences. These findings support the use of retrospective reports of childhood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

Age differences in anxious responding: Older and calmer, unless the trigger is physical.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:44 +0100

The current study examines how the aging relevance of anxiety triggers, particularly those tied to physical threat, influences the expression of anxiety in older and younger adults. It was expected that older adults would exhibit less anxiety than younger adults in response to nonphysical triggers but that this age-related difference would diminish when faced with physical triggers. Anxiety responses were measured in older (N = 49, ages 60–85) and younger (N = 49, ages 17–34) adults in response to (a) physical and social anxiety provocations, and (b) a threat interpretation measure. Consistent with hypotheses, results for the anxiety provocations indicated less anxiety among older (vs. younger) adults on a range of anxiety measures (affective, cognitive, physiological) when triggers di...

The role of life satisfaction and depressive symptoms in all-cause mortality.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:44 +0100

The objective of this study was to investigate whether life satisfaction and depressive symptoms are independent predictors of mortality in a non-Western sample of adults. The sample included 5,131 adults (ages 50–95 at baseline) in Taiwan who participated in the Survey of Health and Living Status of the Near Elderly and Elderly. There were 1,815 deaths recorded over a 10-year period. Higher life satisfaction significantly predicted lower risk of mortality after controlling for age, sex, education, marital status, and health status. Depressive symptoms significantly predicted higher risk of mortality. A significant interaction with age revealed that the protective effect of life satisfaction weakened with age. The results suggest that life satisfaction and depressive symptoms independent...

Interpersonal effects of suffering in older adult caregiving relationships.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:44 +0100

Examining the interpersonal effects of suffering in the context of family caregiving is an important step to a broader understanding of how exposure to suffering affects humans. In this review article, the authors first describe existing evidence that being exposed to the suffering of a care recipient (conceptualized as psychological distress, physical symptoms, and existential/spiritual distress) directly influences caregivers’ emotional experiences. Drawing from past theory and research, the authors propose that caregivers experience similar, complementary, and/or defensive emotions in response to care recipient suffering through mechanisms such as cognitive empathy, mimicry, and conditioned learning, placing caregivers at risk for psychological and physical morbidity. The authors then...

Changes in the sensitivity to appetitive and aversive arousal across adulthood.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:43 +0100

In 2 cross-sectional studies, the authors examined age-related differences in the evaluation of emotional stimuli in 2 community samples, with participants ranging in age from young to older adulthood (18–81 years old). Pictures of the International Affective Picture System were used in Study 1, and written verbs were used in Study 2. Participants rated these stimuli along the 2 major affective dimensions of hedonic valence and emotional arousal, thus yielding a 2-dimensional affective space for each participant. Young adults showed the expected pattern of 2 distinct clusters of stimuli in this space, representing increasing pleasantness (appetitive activation) and unpleasantness (aversive activation) with increasing emotional arousal. In contrast, for older adults, emotional valence and...

Self-perceptions of aging predict mortality and change with approaching death: 16-year longitudinal results from the Berlin Aging Study.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:43 +0100

Satisfaction with one’s own aging and feeling young are indicators of positive well-being in late life. Using 16-year longitudinal data from participants of the Berlin Aging Study (P. B. Baltes & K. U. Mayer, 1999; N = 439; 70- to 100-year-olds), the authors examined whether and how these self-perceptions of aging change with age and how such changes relate to distance from death. Extending previous studies, they found that it is not only higher aging satisfaction and younger subjective age but also more favorable change patterns (e.g., less decline in aging satisfaction) that are uniquely associated with lower mortality hazards. These effects are robust after controls for objective measures such as age, gender, socioeconomic status, diagnosis of dementia, or number of illnesses. As indi...

"Dynamic links of cognitive functioning among married couples: Longitudinal evidence from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing": Correction to Gerstorf, Hoppmann, Anstey, and Luszcz (2009).

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:43 +0100

Reports an error in "Dynamic links of cognitive functioning among married couples: Longitudinal evidence from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing" by Denis Gerstorf, Christiane A. Hoppmann, Kaarin J. Anstey and Mary A. Luszcz (Psychology and Aging, 2009[Jun], Vol 24[2], 296-309). Figure 1 was printed incorrectly due to an error in the production process. The correct version is presented in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2009-08094-004.) Development does not take place in isolation; close others form an important dyad for exploring interrelationships. To examine spousal interrelations in level and change of cognitive functioning in old age, the authors applied dynamic models to 11-year longitudinal data of, initially, 304 married coup...

Now you see it, now you don’t: Age differences in affective reactivity to social tensions.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:43 +0100

We examined whether the use of passive strategies may explain age-related reductions in affective reactivity to interpersonal tensions. Over 8 consecutive evenings, participants (N = 1,031; 25–74 years-old) reported daily negative affect and the occurrence of tense situations resulting in an argument or avoidance of an argument. Older age was related to less affective reactivity when people decided to avoid an argument but was unrelated to affective reactivity when people engaged in arguments. Findings suggest that avoidance of negative situations may largely underlie age-related benefits in affective well-being. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

Developmental emergence and functionality of Sehnsucht (life longings): The sample case of involuntary childlessness in middle-aged women.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:43 +0100

Sehnsucht (life longings), the intense desire for optimal (utopian) states of life that are remote or unattainable, was recently introduced into life-span psychology as a concept of self-regulation (P. B. Baltes, 2008; S. Scheibe, A. M. Freund, & P. B. Baltes, 2007). The authors propose that as a compensatory strategy to deal with nonrealizability and loss, life longings may develop out of blocked goals. Individuals would cease to invest behavioral effort into its attainment and instead maintain the goal target in imagination. In a sample of 168 middle-aged childless women, the present study investigated the circumstances under which the wish for children emerges as a goal or life longing and whether the representation of the wish for children as a life longing is beneficial for well-being...

Self-perception and psychological well-being: The benefits of foreseeing a worse future.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:43 +0100

This study examined whether having a negative expectation of the future may protect well-being in old age. Participants were 200 adults age 60 years or older who rated their current and future selves in the physical and social domains at 2 time points over a 12-month period. Structural equation modeling revealed that future self was positively related to well-being concurrently; yet, it was negatively related to well-being 12 months later, after the authors had controlled for symptoms and current self. Moreover, individuals who underestimated their future selves had higher well-being 12 months later than did those who overestimated their future selves. Findings are interpreted in a framework of discounting: Older adults may actively construct representations of the future that are consiste...

Older adults’ recognition of bodily and auditory expressions of emotion.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:43 +0100

This study compared young and older adults’ ability to recognize bodily and auditory expressions of emotion and to match bodily and facial expressions to vocal expressions. Using emotion discrimination and matching techniques, participants assessed emotion in voices (Experiment 1), point-light displays (Experiment 2), and still photos of bodies with faces digitally erased (Experiment 3). Older adults’ were worse at least some of the time in recognition of anger, sadness, fear, and happiness in bodily expressions and of anger in vocal expressions. Compared with young adults, older adults also found it more difficult to match auditory expressions to facial expressions (5 of 6 emotions) and bodily expressions (3 of 6 emotions). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) ...

We can work it out: Age differences in relational pronouns, physiology, and behavior in marital conflict.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:42 +0100

This study examined the relationship that personal pronouns spoken during a marital conversation have with the emotional qualities of those interactions and with marital satisfaction. Middle-aged and older couples (N = 154) engaged in a 15-min conflict conversation during which physiology and emotional behavior were continuously monitored. Verbatim transcripts of the conversations were coded into 2 lexical categories: (a) we-ness (we-words), pronouns that focus on the couple; (b) separateness (me/you-words), pronouns that focus on the individual spouses. Analyses revealed that greater we-ness was associated with a number of desirable qualities of the interaction (lower cardiovascular arousal, more positive and less negative emotional behavior), whereas greater separateness was associated w...

Aging and fluency-based illusions in recognition memory.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:42 +0100

We examined age-related differences in susceptibility to fluency-based memory illusions. The results from 2 experiments, in which 2 different methods were used to enhance the fluency of recognition test items, revealed that older and young adults did not differ significantly in terms of their overall susceptibility to this type of memory illusion. Older and young adults were also similar in that perceptual fluency did not influence recognition memory responses when there was a mismatch in the sensory modality of the study and test phases. Likewise, a more conceptual fluency manipulation influenced recognition memory responses in both older and young adults regardless of the match in modality. Overall, the results indicate that older adults may not be more vulnerable than young adults to fl...

The relative success of a self-help and a group-based memory training program for older adults.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:42 +0100

This study evaluates self-help and group-based memory training programs to test for their differential impact on memory beliefs and performance. Self-help participants used a manual that presented strategies for name, story, and list recall and practice exercises. Matched content from that same manual was presented by the trainer in 2-hr weekly group sessions for the group-based trainees. Relative to a wait-list control group, most memory measures showed significant gains for both self-help and group-based training, with no significant training condition differences, and these gains were maintained at follow-up. Belief measures showed that locus of control was significantly higher for the self-help and group-based training than the control group; memory self-efficacy significantly declined...

Age differences in strategic behavior during a computation-based skill acquisition task.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:42 +0100

The authors evaluated mechanistic and metacognitive accounts of age differences in strategy transitions during skill acquisition. Old and young participants were trained on a task involving a shift from performing a novel arithmetic algorithm to responding via associative recognition of equation–solution pairings. The strategy shift was manipulated by task instructions that either (a) equally focused on speed and accuracy, (b) encouraged retrieval use as a method toward fast responding, or (c) offered monetary incentives for fast retrieval-based performance. Monetary incentives produced a more rapid shift to retrieval relative to standard instructions; older adults showed a greater incentives effect on retrieval use than younger adults. Monetary incentives encouraged retrieval use and re...

The role of occupational complexity in trajectories of cognitive aging before and after retirement.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:42 +0100

We examined the association between complexity of the main lifetime occupation and changes in cognitive ability in later life. Data on complexity of work with data, people, and things and on 4 cognitive factors (verbal, spatial, memory, and speed) were available from 462 individuals in the longitudinal Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging. Mean age at the first measurement wave was 64.3 years (SD = 7.2), and 65% of the sample had participated in at least three waves of data collection. Occupational complexity with people and data were both correlated with cognitive performance. Individuals with more complex work demonstrated higher mean performance on the verbal, spatial, and speed factors. Latent growth curve analyses indicated that, after correcting for education, only complexity with pe...

Using the attention cascade model to probe cognitive aging.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:42 +0100

Young and older adults searched for 2 digit targets among black letter distractors in rapid serial visual presentation. Unsurprisingly, relative to the young, the older adults performed worse on both targets and exhibited greater and longer attentional blink. The data of each group were computationally accounted for by the attention cascade model (Shih, 2008) with 7 parameters; the optimum values and 95% confidence intervals of the parameters were based on 10,000 bootstrap samples. There was no age effect on the width of the attention window or on the capacity of the consolidation processor. However, relative to the young, the older adults suffered more masking effects of the salient (and brighter) stimulus, required longer consolidation duration, and had greater and more widespread decisi...

The influence of facial masking and sex on older adults’ impressions of individuals with Parkinson’s disease.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:41 +0100

Parkinson’s disease (PD) involves facial masking, which may impair social interaction. Older adult observers who viewed segments of videotaped interviews of individuals with PD expressed less interest in relationships with women with higher masking and judged them as less supportive. Masking did not affect ratings of men in these domains, possibly because higher masking violates gender norms for expressivity in women but not in men. Observers formed less accurate ratings of the social supportiveness and social strain of women than men, and higher masking decreased accuracy for ratings of strain. Results suggest that some of the problems with social relationships in PD may be due to inaccurate impressions and reduced desire to interact with individuals with higher masking, especially wome...

Aging minds and twisting attitudes: An fMRI investigation of age differences in inhibiting prejudice.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:38 +0100

Cognitive capacity is believed to decline with age, but it is not known whether this decline extends to tasks involving social cognition. In the current study, social neuroscience methodologies were used to examine the effects of age-related cognitive decline on older adults’ abilities to engage regulatory mechanisms (which are typically impaired by normal aging) to inhibit negative reactions to stigmatized individuals. Older and young adults were presented with images of stigmatized individuals (e.g., individuals with amputations, substance abusers) and of normal controls while they underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging. All participants were also given a battery of tests to assess their executive function capacity. Young adults showed more activity in areas associated with em...

Selective attention to emotion in the aging brain.

Psychology and Aging — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:35:38 +0100

A growing body of research suggests that the ability to regulate emotion remains stable or improves across the adult life span. Socioemotional selectivity theory maintains that this pattern of findings reflects the prioritization of emotional goals. Given that goal-directed behavior requires attentional control, the present study was designed to investigate age differences in selective attention to emotional lexical stimuli under conditions of emotional interference. Both neural and behavioral measures were obtained during an experiment in which participants completed a flanker task that required them to make categorical judgments about emotional and nonemotional stimuli. Older adults showed interference in both the behavioral and neural measures on control trials but not on emotion trials...

Partner preferences across the life span: Online dating by older adults.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

Stereotypes of older adults as withdrawn or asexual fail to recognize that romantic relationships in later life are increasingly common. The authors analyzed 600 Internet personal ads from 4 age groups: 20–34, 40–54, 60–74, and 75+ years. Predictions from evolutionary theory held true in later life, when reproduction is no longer a concern. Across the life span, men sought physical attractiveness and offered status-related information more than women; women were more selective than men and sought status more than men. With age, men desired women increasingly younger than themselves, whereas women desired older men until ages 75 and over, when they sought men younger than themselves. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

The association of anxiety and depressive symptoms with cognitive performance in community-dwelling older adults.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

The authors examined the association of anxiety, depressive symptoms, and their co-occurrence on cognitive processes in 102 community-dwelling older adults. Participants completed anxiety and depression questionnaires as well as measures of episodic and semantic memory, word fluency, processing speed/shifting attention, and inhibition. Participants with only increased anxiety had poorer processing speed/shifting attention and inhibition, but depressive symptoms alone were not associated with any cognitive deficits. Although coexisting anxiety and depressive symptoms were associated with deficits in 3 cognitive domains, reductions in inhibition were solely attributed to anxiety. Findings suggest an excess cognitive load on inhibitory ability in normal older adults reporting mild anxiety. (P...

The associative deficit in older adult memory: Recognition of pairs is not improved by repetition.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

This study used a novel experimental paradigm that combined associative recognition and list discrimination to study the associative deficit in older adults’ memory (M. Naveh-Benjamin, 2000). Participants viewed 2 lists of word–face pairs and were tested on recognition of pairs from the second study list. Older and young adults’ recognition was increased by repetition of individual items, but repetition of pairs of items increased recognition in young adults only. This provides converging evidence that older adults do not form associative links between items within pairs and supports the hypothesis that an associative deficit contributes to age-related memory decline. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

Aging and recollection in the accuracy of judgments of learning.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

Dual-process theories propose that episodic memory performance reflects both recollection of prior details as well as more automatic influences of the past. The authors explored the idea that recollection mediates the accuracy of judgments of learning (JOLs) and may also help explain age differences in JOL accuracy. Young and older adults made immediate JOLs at study and then completed recognition or recall tests that included a recollect/familiar judgment. JOLs were found to be strongly related to recollected items but not to items remembered on the basis of familiarity. The pattern was weaker in older adults, consistent with age-related declines in recollection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

Remaining time and opportunities at work: Relationships between age, work characteristics, and occupational future time perspective.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

The authors adapted the concept of future time perspective (FTP) to the work context and examined its relationships with age and work characteristics (job complexity and control). Structural equation modeling of data from 176 employees of various occupations showed that age is negatively related to 2 distinct dimensions of occupational FTP: remaining time and remaining opportunities. Work characteristics (job complexity and control) were positively related to remaining opportunities and moderated the relationship between age and remaining opportunities, such that the relationship became weaker with increasing levels of job complexity and control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

Age-related changes in imitating sequences of observed movements.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

Three experiments investigated the size and sources of age-related changes in visual imitation. In Experiment 1, young and older adults viewed sequences of quasi-random movements and then reproduced from memory what they had seen. As expected, older adults made more errors in imitation than their younger counterparts. However, older adults seemed to supplement their memory by exploiting an abstracted representation (gist) of a sequence. Experiments 2 and 3 apportioned the observed age-related changes in imitation performance among several possible causes. Experiment 2 showed that changes in precision of visual perception and motor control together accounted for only a small fraction of age-related changes in imitation quality; Experiment 3 showed that the bulk of the age-related changes ar...

Metacognitive influences on study time allocation in an associative recognition task: An analysis of adult age differences.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

The current study evaluated a metacognitive account of study time allocation, which argues that metacognitive monitoring of recognition test accuracy and latency influences subsequent strategic control and regulation. The authors examined judgments of learning (JOLs), recognition test confidence judgments (CJs), and subjective response time (RT) judgments by younger and older adults in an associative recognition task involving 2 study–test phases, with self-paced study in Phase 2. Multilevel regression analyses assessed the degree to which age and metacognitive variables predicted Phase 2 study time independent of actual test accuracy and RT. Outcomes supported the metacognitive account—JOLs and CJs predicted study time independent of recognition accuracy. For older adults with errant ...

Examining prepotent response suppression in aging: A kinematic analysis.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

Two experiments were designed to explore how age differences in conflict detection may contribute to poorer motor performance. In each experiment, 12 young adults (YAs) and 12 older adults (OAs) performed a finger sequencing task in which the frequency of specific critical transitions was varied. These critical transitions were contrasted with violation transitions to assess the ability to detect a conflict in response requirements. In addition to accuracy and reaction time, the authors used kinematic data to parse movements into planning and motor execution phases. OAs were differentially slower to respond to violations than YAs, in line with other research on executive control, prepotent response suppression, and aging. Kinematic analyses revealed that YAs executed movements more rapidly...

Age-group differences in medial cortex activity associated with thinking about self-relevant agendas.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we compared young and older adults’ brain activity as they thought about motivationally self-relevant agendas (hopes and aspirations, duties and obligations) and concrete control items (e.g., shape of USA). Young adults’ activity replicated a double dissociation (M. K. Johnson et al., 2006): An area of medial frontal gyrus/anterior cingulate cortex was most active during hopes and aspirations trials, and an area of medial posterior cortex—primarily posterior cingulate—was most active during duties and obligations trials. Compared with young adults, older adults showed attenuated responses in medial cortex, especially in medial prefrontal cortex, with both less activity during self-relevant trials and less deactivation duri...

Age differences and similarities in the shift from computation to retrieval during reading comprehension.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

Previous research has established that 1 mechanism underlying speed-ups in task performance with practice involves a shift from computational processing to retrieval of information encoded earlier in practice. To what extent do young and older adults differ in shifts from computation to retrieval with practice in reading comprehension? Young and older adults read short stories containing an unfamiliar noun–noun combination (e.g., bee caterpillar) followed by disambiguating information indicating the combination’s meaning (either the normatively dominant meaning or an alternative subordinate meaning). Stories were presented either once or repeatedly across practice blocks. In Experiment 1, both age groups shifted from computation to retrieval with practice for the repeated items. Howeve...

Effects of emotional valence and arousal upon memory trade-offs with aging.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

Attention can be attracted faster by emotional relative to neutral information, and memory also can be strengthened for that emotional information. However, within visual scenes, often there is an advantage in memory for central emotional portions at the expense of memory for peripheral background information, called an emotion-induced memory trade-off. The authors examined how aging impacts the trade-off by manipulating valence (positive, negative) and arousal (low, high) of a central emotional item within a neutral background scene and testing memory for item and background components separately. They also assessed memory after 2 study–test delay intervals, to investigate age differences in the trade-off over time. Results revealed similar patterns of performance between groups after a...

Differential effects of age on involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memory.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

Research on aging and autobiographical memory has focused almost exclusively on voluntary autobiographical memory. However, in everyday life, autobiographical memories often come to mind spontaneously without deliberate attempt to retrieve anything. In the present study, diary and word-cue methods were used to compare the involuntary and voluntary memories of 44 young and 38 older adults. The results showed that older adults reported fewer involuntary and voluntary memories than did younger adults. Additionally, the life span distribution of involuntary and voluntary memories did not differ in young adults (a clear recency effect) or in older adults (a recency effect and a reminiscence bump). Despite these similarities between involuntary and voluntary memories, there were also important d...

Predictors of change in caregiver burden and depressive symptoms following nursing home admission.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

Prior research has yielded discrepant findings regarding change in caregiver burden or depressive symptoms after institutionalization of persons with dementia. However, earlier studies often included small postplacement samples. In samples of 1,610 and 1,116 dementia caregivers with up to 6 months’ and 12 months’ postplacement data, respectively, this study identified predictors of change in caregiver burden and depressive symptoms following nursing home admission. Descriptive analyses found that caregivers reported significant and considerable decreases in burden in the 6- and 12-month postplacement panels. A number of variables predicted increased burden and depressive symptoms in the 6- and 12-month postplacement panels. Preplacement measures of burden and depressive symptoms, site ...

Depression as a risk factor or prodromal feature for dementia? Findings in a population-based sample of Swedish twins.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

This study tested whether history of depression is associated with an increased likelihood of dementia, and whether a first depressive episode earlier in life is associated with increased dementia risk, or whether only depressive episodes close in time to dementia onset are related to dementia. Depression information came from national hospital discharge registries, medical history, and medical records. Dementia was diagnosed clinically. In case–control results, individuals with recent registry-identified depression were 3.9 times more likely than those with no registry-identified depression history to have dementia, whereas registry-identified depression earlier in life was not associated with dementia risk. Each 1-year increase in time between depression onset and dementia onset or equ...

A prospective study of age differences in consequences of emotional control in women referred to clinical mammography.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

Age differences in emotional control and their consequences were examined in women referred to mammography on the suspicion of breast cancer but with benign results of the examination. Under natural experimental conditions, the levels of emotional control and distress were measured 1 week prior to the examination as well as 4 and 12 weeks after the examination in 717 younger women (ages 19–39), middle-aged women (ages 40–59), and older women (ages 60–85). A higher level of emotional control was found in the older women; this indicates that, in these birth cohorts, emotion-focused coping is more prevalent in old age than in young adulthood, even when similar stressors are experienced. The analyses revealed an interaction between age and emotional control; higher levels of control were...

Affective experience in adulthood and old age: The role of affective arousal and perceived affect regulation.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

The aim of the present study was to investigate age-related differences in self-reported affect in adulthood. Measurement of affect encompassed high- and low-arousal positive and negative affect. The sample consisted of 277 participants who were between 20 and 80 years old. Older participants showed a higher level of low-arousal positive affect and did not significantly differ from the two younger age groups in high-arousal positive affect. Both high- and low-arousal negative affect decreased from middle to older adulthood. Only partially are these age effects explained by sociodemographic characteristics, education, or self-reported health and personality. The perceived regulation of affect in the face of difficulties or threatening situations emerged as a central mediator in the associat...

Theory of mind associations with other cognitive functions and brain imaging in normal aging.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

The study investigated age-related differences in theory of mind and explored the relationship between this ability, other cognitive abilities, and structural brain measures. A cohort of 106 adults (ages 50–90 years) was recruited. Participants completed tests of theory of mind, verbal and performance intelligence, executive function, and information processing speed and underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging (measurement of whole brain volume, volume of white matter hyperintensities, and diffusion tensor imaging of white matter integrity). Theory of mind ability declined with increasing age, and the relationship between theory of mind and age was fully mediated by performance intelligence, executive function, and information processing speed and was partially mediated by verbal...

Do younger and older adults’ communicative goals influence off-topic speech in autobiographical narratives?

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

The present research investigated younger and older adults’ communicative goals and their effects on off-topic speech for autobiographical narratives. Participants indicated their communicative goals by rating preferences among paired goals, for example, focus–fascinating, one of which was designated as an expressive goal, appropriate for producing elaborative speech, and one of which was an objective goal, suited to producing concise speech. The participants then told stories about episodic and procedural topics, which were rated by groups of younger and older listeners. Age differences emerged in communicative goals, where younger adults clearly favored expressive goals for episodic topics and objective goals for procedural topics. In contrast, older adults’ goals were more diverse...

Schema reliance for developmental goals increases from early to late adulthood: Improvement for the young, loss prevention for the old.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

Conclusions are that reliance on life-span schemata when remembering developmentally relevant information increases with age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)

Dynamic links of cognitive functioning among married couples: Longitudinal evidence from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

Development does not take place in isolation; close others form an important dyad for exploring interrelationships. To examine spousal interrelations in level and change of cognitive functioning in old age, the authors applied dynamic models to 11-year longitudinal data of, initially, 304 married couples from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing (aged 64–98 years at Time 1; M = 76 years). Findings revealed that perceptual speed for husbands predicted subsequent perceptual speed decline for wives (time lags of 1 year). There was little evidence for the opposite unidirectional effect or a bidirectional association between husbands and wives. Potential covariates (age, education, medical conditions, functional limitations, and depressive symptoms) did not account for differential lea...

Tensions in the parent and adult child relationship: Links to solidarity and ambivalence.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

In this study, adult sons and daughters, age 22 to 49, and their mothers and fathers (N = 158 families, 474 individuals) reported the intensity of different tension topics and relationship quality (solidarity and ambivalence) with one another. Tensions varied between and within families by generation, gender, and age of offspring. Compared to tensions regarding individual issues, tensions regarding the relationship were associated with lower affective solidarity and greater ambivalence. Findings are consistent with the developmental schism hypothesis, which indicates that parent–child tensions are common and are the result of discrepancies in developmental needs that vary by generation, gender, and age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and ...

Conflict and collaboration in middle-aged and older couples: II. Cardiovascular reactivity during marital interaction.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

Marital strain confers risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), perhaps though cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) to stressful marital interactions. CVR to marital stressors may differ between middle-age and older adults, and types of marital interactions that evoke CVR may also differ across these age groups, as relationship contexts and stressors differ with age. The authors examined cardiovascular responses to a marital conflict discussion and collaborative problem solving in 300 middle-aged and older married couples. Marital conflict evoked greater increases in blood pressure, cardiac output, and cardiac sympathetic activation than did collaboration. Older couples displayed smaller heart rate responses to conflict than did middle-aged couples but larger blood pressure responses to collaborat...

Conflict and collaboration in middle-aged and older couples: I. Age differences in agency and communion during marital interaction.

Psychology and Aging — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:09:00 +0100

Prior theory and research regarding age differences in marital interaction suggest that older couples display and experience more positivity and less negativity than middle-aged couples. However, studies of overt behavior in older couples are relatively rare and have emphasized disagreement, neglecting other important contexts for older couples such as collaboration during everyday problem solving. Further, the affiliation or communion dimension of social interaction (i.e., warmth vs. hostility) is commonly assessed but not the control or agency dimension (e.g., dominance vs. submissiveness). The present study examined affect, cognitive appraisals, and overt behavior during disagreement (i.e., discussing a current conflict) and collaboration (i.e., planning errands) in 300 middle-aged and ...

Emotion experience, expression, and regulation in Alzheimer's disease.