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An Internet study of prospective memory across adulthood.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 sin...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Logie, Robert H.; Maylor, Elizabeth A. Source Type: journals

Aging, hearing acuity, and the attentional costs of effortful listening.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 eff...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Tun, Patricia A.; McCoy, Sandra; Wingfield, Arthur Source Type: journals

Eye movements and the perceptual span in older and younger readers.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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)
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Rayner, Keith; Castelhano, Monica S.; Yang, Jinmian Source Type: journals

Replicating the positivity effect in picture memory in Koreans: Evidence for cross-cultural generalizability.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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) (Sou...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Kwon, Yookyung; Scheibe, Susanne; Samanez-Larkin, Gregory R.; Tsai, Jeanne L.; Carstensen, Laura L. Source Type: journals

Attentional bias for threat in older adults: Moderation of the positivity bias by trait anxiety and stimulus modality.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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)
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Lee, Lewina O.; Knight, Bob G. Source Type: journals

Aging and everyday judgments: The impact of motivational and processing resource factors.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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. Increasi...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Hess, Thomas M.; Leclerc, Christina M.; Swaim, Elizabeth; Weatherbee, Sarah R. Source Type: journals

Thinking about my generation: Adaptive effects of a dual age identity in later adulthood.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Weiss, David; Lang, Frieder R. Source Type: journals

Five-factor model personality traits and the retirement transition: Longitudinal and cross-sectional associations.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 repor...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Löckenhoff, Corinna E.; Terracciano, Antonio; Costa Jr., Paul T. Source Type: journals

Stability and change in retrospective reports of childhood experiences over a 5-year period: Findings from the Davis Longitudinal Study.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Yancura, Loriena A.; Aldwin, Carolyn M. Source Type: journals

Age differences in anxious responding: Older and calmer, unless the trigger is physical.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 ...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Teachman, Bethany A.; Gordon, Tynessa Source Type: journals

The role of life satisfaction and depressive symptoms in all-cause mortality.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 inter...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Collins, Amy Love; Glei, Dana A.; Goldman, Noreen Source Type: journals

Interpersonal effects of suffering in older adult caregiving relationships.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 suffer...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Monin, Joan K.; Schulz, Richard Source Type: journals

Changes in the sensitivity to appetitive and aversive arousal across adulthood.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 increa...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Keil, Andreas; Freund, Alexandra M. Source Type: journals

Self-perceptions of aging predict mortality and change with approaching death: 16-year longitudinal results from the Berlin Aging Study.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Kotter-Grühn, Dana; Kleinspehn-Ammerlahn, Anna; Gerstorf, Denis; Smith, Jacqui Source Type: journals

"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).Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 spous...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Gerstorf, Denis; Hoppmann, Christiane A.; Anstey, Kaarin J.; Luszcz, Mary A. Source Type: journals

Now you see it, now you don’t: Age differences in affective reactivity to social tensions.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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. (PsycIN...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Charles, Susan Turk; Piazza, Jennifer R.; Luong, Gloria; Almeida, David M. Source Type: journals

Developmental emergence and functionality of Sehnsucht (life longings): The sample case of involuntary childlessness in middle-aged women.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 ...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Kotter-Grühn, Dana; Scheibe, Susanne; Blanchard-Fields, Fredda; Baltes, Paul B. Source Type: journals

Self-perception and psychological well-being: The benefits of foreseeing a worse future.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 over...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Cheng, Sheung-Tak; Fung, Helene H.; Chan, Alfred C. M. Source Type: journals

Older adults’ recognition of bodily and auditory expressions of emotion.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 ...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Ruffman, Ted; Sullivan, Susan; Dittrich, Winand Source Type: journals

We can work it out: Age differences in relational pronouns, physiology, and behavior in marital conflict.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 o...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Seider, Benjamin H.; Hirschberger, Gilad; Nelson, Kristin L.; Levenson, Robert W. Source Type: journals

Aging and fluency-based illusions in recognition memory.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 respon...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Thapar, Anjali; Westerman, Deanne L. Source Type: journals

The relative success of a self-help and a group-based memory training program for older adults.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 mea...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Hastings, Erin C.; West, Robin L. Source Type: journals

Age differences in strategic behavior during a computation-based skill acquisition task.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 re...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Touron, Dayna R.; Hertzog, Christopher Source Type: journals

The role of occupational complexity in trajectories of cognitive aging before and after retirement.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 demonstrat...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Finkel, Deborah; Andel, Ross; Gatz, Margaret; Pedersen, Nancy L. Source Type: journals

Using the attention cascade model to probe cognitive aging.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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,...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Shih, Shui-I Source Type: journals

The influence of facial masking and sex on older adults’ impressions of individuals with Parkinson’s disease.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Hemmesch, Amanda R.; Tickle-Degnen, Linda; Zebrowitz, Leslie A. Source Type: journals

Aging minds and twisting attitudes: An fMRI investigation of age differences in inhibiting prejudice.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 resonan...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Krendl, Anne C.; Heatherton, Todd F.; Kensinger, Elizabeth A. Source Type: journals

Selective attention to emotion in the aging brain.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 j...
Source: Psychology and Aging - September 14, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Samanez-Larkin, Gregory R.; Robertson, Elaine R.; Mikels, Joseph A.; Carstensen, Laura L.; Gotlib, Ian H. Source Type: journals

Partner preferences across the life span: Online dating by older adults.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 un...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Alterovitz, Sheyna Sears-Roberts; Mendelsohn, Gerald A. Source Type: journals

The association of anxiety and depressive symptoms with cognitive performance in community-dwelling older adults.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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, red...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Beaudreau, Sherry A.; O’Hara, Ruth Source Type: journals

The associative deficit in older adult memory: Recognition of pairs is not improved by repetition.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 associativ...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Overman, Amy A.; Becker, James T. Source Type: journals

Aging and recollection in the accuracy of judgments of learning.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 ...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Daniels, Karen A.; Toth, Jeffrey P.; Hertzog, Christopher Source Type: journals

Remaining time and opportunities at work: Relationships between age, work characteristics, and occupational future time perspective.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Zacher, Hannes; Frese, Michael Source Type: journals

Age-related changes in imitating sequences of observed movements.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 a...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Maryott, Jessica; Sekuler, Robert Source Type: journals

Metacognitive influences on study time allocation in an associative recognition task: An analysis of adult age differences.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Hines, Jarrod C.; Touron, Dayna R.; Hertzog, Christopher Source Type: journals

Examining prepotent response suppression in aging: A kinematic analysis.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 t...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Trewartha, Kevin M.; Endo, Alejandro; Li, Karen Z. H.; Penhune, Virginia B. Source Type: journals

Age-group differences in medial cortex activity associated with thinking about self-relevant agendas.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 a...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Mitchell, Karen J.; Raye, Carol L.; Ebner, Natalie C.; Tubridy, Shannon M.; Frankel, Hillary; Johnson, Marcia K. Source Type: journals

Age differences and similarities in the shift from computation to retrieval during reading comprehension.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 prese...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Rawson, Katherine A.; Touron, Dayna R. Source Type: journals

Effects of emotional valence and arousal upon memory trade-offs with aging.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 memor...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Waring, Jill D.; Kensinger, Elizabeth A. Source Type: journals

Differential effects of age on involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memory.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Schlagman, Simone; Kliegel, Matthias; Schulz, Jörg; Kvavilashvili, Lia Source Type: journals

Predictors of change in caregiver burden and depressive symptoms following nursing home admission.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 o...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Gaugler, Joseph E.; Mittelman, Mary S.; Hepburn, Kenneth; Newcomer, Robert Source Type: journals

Depression as a risk factor or prodromal feature for dementia? Findings in a population-based sample of Swedish twins.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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, whe...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Brommelhoff, Jessica A.; Gatz, Margaret; Johansson, Boo; McArdle, John J.; Fratiglioni, Laura; Pedersen, Nancy L. Source Type: journals

A prospective study of age differences in consequences of emotional control in women referred to clinical mammography.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 t...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Mehlsen, Mimi; Jensen, Anders Bonde; Christensen, Søren; Pedersen, Christina Gundgaard; Lassesen, Berit; Zachariae, Robert Source Type: journals

Affective experience in adulthood and old age: The role of affective arousal and perceived affect regulation.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 se...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Kessler, Eva-Marie; Staudinger, Ursula M. Source Type: journals

Theory of mind associations with other cognitive functions and brain imaging in normal aging.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 relationshi...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Charlton, Rebecca A.; Barrick, Thomas R.; Markus, Hugh S.; Morris, Robin G. Source Type: journals

Do younger and older adults’ communicative goals influence off-topic speech in autobiographical narratives?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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,...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Trunk, Dunja L.; Abrams, Lise Source Type: journals

Schema reliance for developmental goals increases from early to late adulthood: Improvement for the young, loss prevention for the old.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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)
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Ebner, Natalie C.; Riediger, Michaela; Lindenberger, Ulman Source Type: journals

Dynamic links of cognitive functioning among married couples: Longitudinal evidence from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 b...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Gerstorf, Denis; Hoppmann, Christiane A.; Anstey, Kaarin J.; Luszcz, Mary A. Source Type: journals

Tensions in the parent and adult child relationship: Links to solidarity and ambivalence.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 resu...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Birditt, Kira S.; Miller, Laura M.; Fingerman, Karen L.; Lefkowitz, Eva S. Source Type: journals

Conflict and collaboration in middle-aged and older couples: II. Cardiovascular reactivity during marital interaction.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
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 activati...
Source: Psychology and Aging - June 3, 2009 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Smith, Timothy W.; Uchino, Bert N.; Berg, Cynthia A.; Florsheim, Paul; Pearce, Gale; Hawkins, Melissa; Henry, Nancy J. M.; Beveridge, Ryan M.; Skinner, Michelle A.; Ko, Kelly J.; Olsen-Cerny, Chrisanna Source Type: journals