Enduring dispositions in adult males.

Retest coefficients for temperamental traits measured by the Guilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey were assessed at 6- and 12-yr intervals to determine the degree of stability in personality and to evaluate the hypotheses that (a) younger men will show lower stability than older men and (b) traits related to neuroticism will be less stable than traits related to extraversion. Ss were 460 male volunteers in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, ranging in age from 17 to 85 yrs at the time of 1st testing. Results show uncorrected stability coefficients ranging from .59 to .87. No consistent evidence of lower stability in younger Ss was found, and neurotic and extraverted traits appeared comparably stable when corrected for unreliability. The replicated pattern of consistent stability across age groups and across traits is discussed. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Biased recollections in older adults: The role of implicit theories of aging.

Explored how older adults recall the traits they possessed at an earlier age. It was hypothesized that older adults' recollections would be related to their theories about aging. In Study 1, a group of older Ss provided their theories concerning how various traits change with age. Another group of older Ss rated their current status on these traits and recalled the status they possessed at a younger age. In addition, a group of younger adults rated their current status on the same traits. On traits theorized to increase with age, older Ss recalled themselves as possessing lower levels at an earlier age than the younger group reported possessing. On traits theorized to decrease with age, older Ss recalled themselves as possessing higher levels at an earlier age than the younger group reported possessing. Study 2 indicated that this effect is obtained regardless of trait positivity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interpreting the Good Life: Growth Memories in the Lives of Mature, Happy People.

In 2 studies, the authors examined autobiographical memories for the presence of 2 growth orientations that were expected to correspond differentially to maturity and well-being, which are considered to be key facets of "the good life" by L. A. King (2001). Mature participants emphasized integrative memories (conceptual integration and learning), whereas happy participants emphasized intrinsic memories (humanistic concerns). Both kinds of growth memories correlated more strongly with eudaimonic than with hedonic measures of well-being. Growth memories were largely independent of Big Five traits in relation to maturity and well-being. Finally, older participants were more likely than younger participants to have greater maturity (marginally) and well-being, but this was in part explained by older participants' greater tendency to have growth memories. The discussion considers the role of growth memories in the intentional cultivation of the good life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The emergence of social dominance in young boys' play groups: Developmental differences and behavior correlates.

This study examined relations among dominance, sociometric preference, and social behavior in groups of 1st- and 3rd-grade boys. 20 groups of 6 unacquainted boys met for 5 45-min semistructured play sessions on consecutive days. Sociometric interviews yielded daily social preference scores. Boys' social behaviors were coded from video records into discrete categories. Dominance hierarchies were formed on the basis of asymmetry (receiving vs initiating) of peer-directed aggression or persuasion attempts. Group-level results indicated that the least coherently organized groups were those containing younger boys and those in which aggression occurred at a high rate. Individual-level results indicated that dominance was associated with social preference to a greater degree among younger than older boys. Dominance was more highly related to leadership in older than younger boys. Implications of these findings are discussed with respect to the role of aggression in the social organization of boys' peer groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stability and change in religiousness during emerging adulthood.

Understanding the development of religiousness is an important endeavor because religiousness has been shown to be related to positive outcomes. The current study examined mean-level, rank-order, and individual-level change in females' religiousness during emerging adulthood. Genetic and environmental influences on religiousness and its change and stability were also investigated. Analyses were completed with an epidemiological study of 2 cohorts of twins: 1 assessed at ages 14 and 18 and a 2nd at 20 and 25. Mean levels of religiousness decreased significantly with age, while rank-order stability was high. Individual-level change was also evident. Analyses also supported the hypotheses that more change would occur in the younger cohort compared with the older cohort and that more change would occur in religious service attendance than the general index of religiousness. Twin analyses suggested that the heritability of religiousness increased with age, while the shared environmental influences decreased. For the younger cohort, change was genetic in origin, while stability was environmental. In the older cohort, change was influenced by nonshared environment and stability by both genes and family environment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differences between estimates and measured PaCO2 during rest and exercise in older subjects

Arterial PCO2 (PaCO2) has been estimated during exercise with good accuracy in younger individuals by using the Jones equation (PJCO2) (J. Appl. Physiol. 47: 954-960, 1979). The purpose of this project was to determine the utility of estimating PaCO2 from end-tidal PCO2 (PETCO2) or PJCO2 at rest, ventilatory threshold (VTh), and maximal exercise (Max) in older subjects. PETCO2 was determined from respired gases simultaneously (MGA 1100) with arterial blood gases (radial arterial catheter) in 12 older and 11 younger subjects at rest and during exercise. Mean differences were analyzed with paired t-tests, and relationships between the estimated PaCO2 values and the actual values of PaCO2 were determined with correlation coefficients. In the older subjects, PETCO2 was not significantly different from PaCO2 at rest (-1.2 +/- 4.3 Torr), VTh (0.4 +/- 2.5), or Max (-0.8 +/- 2.7), and the two were significantly (P < 0.05) correlated at Vth (r = 0.84) and Max (r = 0.87) but not at rest (r = 0.47). PJCO2 was similar to PaCO2 at rest (-1.0 +/- 3.9) and Vth (-1. 3 +/- 2.3) but significantly lower at Max (-3.0 +/- 2.6), and the two were significantly correlated at Vth (r = 0.86) and Max (r = 0. 80) but not at rest (r = 0.54). PETCO2 was significantly higher than PaCO2 during exercise in the younger subjects but similar to PaCO2 at rest. PJCO2 was similar to PaCO2 at rest and Vth but significantly lower at Max in younger subjects. In conclusion, our data demonstrate that PaCO2 during exercise is better estimated by PETCO2 than by PJCO2 in older subjects, contrary to what is observed in younger subjects. This appears to be related to the finding that PETCO2 does not exceed PaCO2 during exercise in older subjects, as occurs in the younger subjects. However, PaCO2 at rest is best estimated by PJCO2 in both younger and older subjects.     

Auditory temporal order perception in younger and older adults

This investigation examined the abilities of younger and older listeners to discriminate and identify temporal order of sounds presented in tonal sequences. It was hypothesized that older listeners would exhibit greater difficulty than younger listeners on both temporal processing tasks, particularly for complex stimulus patterns. It was also anticipated that tone order discrimination would be easier than tone order identification for all listeners. Listeners were younger and older adults with either normal hearing or mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing losses. Stimuli were temporally contiguous three-tone sequences within a 1/3 octave frequency range centered at 4000 Hz. For the discrimination task, listeners discerned differences between standard and comparison stimulus sequences that varied in tonal temporal order. For the identification task, listeners identified tone order of a single sequence using labels of relative pitch. Older listeners performed more poorly than younger listeners on the discrimination task for the more complex pitch patterns and on the identification task for faster stimulus presentation rates. The results also showed that order discrimination is easier than order identification for all listeners. The effects of hearing loss on the ordering tasks were minimal.     

Age effects on social cognition: Faces tell a different story.

The authors administered social cognition tasks to younger and older adults to investigate age-related differences in social and emotional processing. Although slower, older adults were as accurate as younger adults in identifying the emotional valence (i.e., positive, negative, or neutral) of facial expressions. However, the age difference in reaction time was largest for negative faces. Older adults were significantly less accurate at identifying specific facial expressions of fear and sadness. No age differences specific to social function were found on tasks of self-reference, identifying emotional words, or theory of mind. Performance on the social tasks in older adults was independent of performance on general cognitive tasks (e.g., working memory) but was related to personality traits and emotional awareness. Older adults also showed more intercorrelations among the social tasks than did the younger adults. These findings suggest that age differences in social cognition are limited to the processing of facial emotion. Nevertheless, with age there appears to be increasing reliance on a common resource to perform social tasks, but one that is not shared with other cognitive domains. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neural basis for recognition confidence in younger and older adults.

Although several studies have examined the neural basis for age-related changes in objective memory performance, less is known about how the process of memory monitoring changes with aging. The authors used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine retrospective confidence in memory performance in aging. During low confidence, both younger and older adults showed behavioral evidence that they were guessing during recognition and that they were aware they were guessing when making confidence judgments. Similarly, both younger and older adults showed increased neural activity during low- compared to high-confidence responses in the lateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and left intraparietal sulcus. In contrast, older adults showed more high-confidence errors than younger adults. Younger adults showed greater activity for high compared to low confidence in medial temporal lobe structures, but older adults did not show this pattern. Taken together, these findings may suggest that impairments in the confidence–accuracy relationship for memory in older adults, which are often driven by high-confidence errors, may be primarily related to altered neural signals associated with greater activity for high-confidence responses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stress and coping among gay men: Age and ethnic differences.

Previous studies suggest that perceived stigmatization of sexual minority status, ethnicity, and age are associated with negative mental health outcomes, and other studies suggest that coping styles may influence these outcomes. However, no studies have examined these relationships among gay men of varying ethnicities and age groups. Three hundred eighty-three Black and White, younger, middle-aged, and older adult gay men completed measures of perceived stigmatization, coping style, and mental health outcomes. Black older adult gay men reported significantly higher levels of perceived ageism than the older White group, significantly higher levels of perceived racism than the younger Black group, significantly higher levels of homonegativity than the younger Black and the White groups, and were more likely to use disengaged coping styles than White gay men. However, Black older adult gay men did not experience significantly higher levels of negative mental health outcomes. Results suggest that further research should examine how older Black gay men, who perceive higher levels of stigma while reporting greater use of less effective coping styles, do not appear to be experiencing more negative mental health outcomes as a result. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical access in younger and older adults: The case of the mass/count distinction.

Although lexicosemantic deficits are not typically seen in older adults, some studies indicate that age-related changes in semantic processing may occur. We had groups of older and younger adults perform speeded lexical decision on mass (e.g., honey), count (e.g., car), and dual nouns, which may be either mass or count (e.g., lamb). Singular dual nouns engendered significantly faster response times in older adults than mass and count nouns, whereas younger adults manifested similar response times to count and dual nouns. These results point toward a three-way distinction in the lexicon between mass, count, and dual nouns. Older adults appear to treat a larger set of nouns as dual than do younger adults. This may be due to awareness of the mass/count ambiguity present in a greater number of lexical items, as a result of their greater linguistic experience. Alternatively, in order to conserve processing resources, older adults may not activate mass/count information when recognizing a dual noun unless a mass or count reading is forced by context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and attentional guidance during visual search: Functional neuroanatomy by positron emission tomography.

Positron emission tomography (PET) was used to examine adult age differences in neural activation during visual search. Target detection was less accurate for older adults than for younger adults, but both age groups were successful in using color to guide attention to a subset of display items. Increasing perceptual difficulty led to greater activation of occipitotemporal cortex for younger adults than for older adults, apparently as the result of older adults maintaining higher levels of activation within the easier task conditions. The results suggest that compensation for age-related decline in the efficiency of occipitotemporal cortical functioning was implemented by changes in the relative level of activation within this visual processing pathway, rather than by the recruitment of other cortical regions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clustering and switching as two components of verbal fluency: Evidence from younger and older healthy adults.

Although verbal fluency is a frequently used neuropsychological test, little is known about the underlying cognitive processes. The authors proposed that 2 important components of fluency performance are clustering (i.e., the production of words within semantic or phonemic subcategories) and switching (i.e., the ability to shift between clusters). In Experiment 1, correlational data from 54 older and 41 younger adults indicated that both components were highly correlated with the number of words generated on semantic fluency, whereas switching was more highly correlated than clustering with the number of words generated on phonemic fluency. On semantic fluency, younger participants generated more words and switched more frequently than older participants; on phonemic fluency, older participants produced larger clusters than younger participants. In Experiment 2, among 22 young adults, divided attention decreased the number of words generated and decreased switching on phonemic fluency only. Overall, findings suggest that clustering and switching are dissociable fluency components and that switching is related to frontal-lobe functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's understanding of social anxiety.

202 2nd, 4th, and 7th graders evaluated story characters who were either highly or less motivated to impress an audience and had either high or low expectations of being able to accomplish their self-presentational goals. As predicted according to a self-presentation model of social anxiety, both factors were related to judgments of the character's social anxiety, especially for the older Ss. For all age groups, actors who expected to do poorly rather than well were regarded as more anxious, as more likely to exhibit nervous responses and to have communication difficulties, and as less likely to be successful in accomplishing their goal; they were also evaluated less favorably. The actor's motivation had different effects on younger and older Ss; 2nd graders attributed less anxiety to highly motivated actors, whereas older Ss attributed greater anxiety to them. For all age groups, high motivation was expected to have a channeling effect on behaviors that would increase interpersonal effectiveness. A finding that was consistent with the literature on social-cognitive development was that older Ss displayed greater differentiation in their cause–effect inferences and that they better appreciated the complex implications of social anxiety. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Wallerian degeneration of peripheral nerve. Age-dependent loss of nerve lipids

The age-dependent loss of the major peripheral nerve lipids (cholesterol, phospholipid, and total galactolipid) was quantitated over a period of 9 weeks of Wallerian degeneration induced by surgical transection of rabbit sciatic nerves in animals of several ages. Proportionate losses of these lipids were determined by calculating the content of each lipid on a per nerve and on a per gram fresh weight basis remaining after a given period of Wallerian degeneration as a percent of original normal values at several time following surgery. The proportionate loss of each lipid from the distal stump was the most prompt and the most complete in nerves transected at 2 weeks of age, and the least in nerves transected at 20 weeks of age. The prompter clearance of these lipids from younger than older degenerating nerve gives convincing evidence that the suggestion from light-microscopic studies of faster clearance of neural debris in younger than in older animals is correct. A possible relationship between these biochemical findings and the phenomenon of greater functional recovery from peripheral nerve injury in younger than in older subjects is discussed.     

Breaking the waves: Age differences in electrical brain activity when reading text with distractors.

The authors tested whether older adults have greater difficulty than younger adults in ignoring task-irrelevant information during reading as a result of age-related decline in inhibitory processes. Participants were shown target sentences containing distractor words. They were instructed to read aloud each sentence and ignore distractors. The N400 event-related potential (ERP) was used to measure the extent of semantic processing of target and distracting information. It showed that younger adults semantically processed both target and distracting material, whereas online processing of target sentences in older adults was disrupted by the distractors. In older adults, memory for target information related to their susceptibility to distraction and inhibition efficiency. Implications for age-differences in inhibitory control, working memory, and resource capacity are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Does audiovisual speech offer a fountain of youth for old ears? An event-related brain potential study of age differences in audiovisual speech perception.

The current study addressed the question whether audiovisual (AV) speech can improve speech perception in older and younger adults in a noisy environment. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to investigate age-related differences in the processes underlying AV speech perception. Participants performed an object categorization task in three conditions, namely auditory-only (A), visual-only (V), and AVspeech. Both age groups revealed an equivalent behavioral AVspeech benefit over unisensory trials. ERP analyses revealed an amplitude reduction of the auditory P1 and N1 on AVspeech trials relative to the summed unisensory (A + V) response in both age groups. These amplitude reductions are interpreted as an indication of multisensory efficiency as fewer neural resources were recruited to achieve better performance. Of interest, the observed P1 amplitude reduction was larger in older adults. Younger and older adults also showed an earlier auditory N1 in AVspeech relative to A and A + V trials, an effect that was again greater in the older adults. The degree of multisensory latency shift was predicted by basic auditory functioning (i.e., higher hearing thresholds were associated with larger latency shifts) in both age groups. Together, the results show that AV speech processing is not only intact in older adults, but that the facilitation of neural responses occurs earlier in and to a greater extent than in younger adults. Thus, older adults appear to benefit more from additional visual speech cues than younger adults, possibly to compensate for more impoverished unisensory inputs because of sensory aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Engaging the aging workforce: The relationship between perceived age similarity, satisfaction with coworkers, and employee engagement.

Business publications and the popular press have stressed the importance of creating conditions for meaningful employee expression in work roles, also known as engagement. Few empirical studies, however, have examined how individual or situational factors relate to engagement. Consequently, this study examines the interplay between employee age, perceived coworker age composition, and satisfaction with older (older than 55) and younger (younger than 40) coworkers on engagement using a sample of 901 individuals employed in the United Kingdom. Results indicated that satisfaction with one's coworkers related significantly to engagement. Moreover, perceived age similarity was associated with higher levels of engagement among older workers when they were highly satisfied with their coworkers over 55 and lower levels of engagement when they were not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Generalized slowing in sinusoidal tracking by older adults.

Older and younger adults manually tracked sinusoidal input signals. Older adults exhibited 2 forms of slowing. First, they lagged behind the target somewhat more than younger adults. Second, they made considerably smaller movements than the younger adults. Because the velocity of a sinusoidal pattern is proportional to its amplitude, these smaller movements were also slower. Both older and younger adults made smaller movements with a compensatory display and with higher frequency inputs. The high degree of proportionality among these effects was taken as evidence for generalized slowing by the older adults. This slowing may prevent older adults from successfully adjusting an internal pattern generator to match their motions to the sinusoidal input signal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Effects of Aging and Divided Attention on Memory for Item and Associative Information.

The present study examined how aging and divided attention influence memory for item and associative information. Older adults and younger adults working under full-attention conditions and younger adults working under divided-attention conditions studied unrelated word pairs. Memory for item information was measured by later recognition of the 2nd word in the pair, and associative information was measured by recognition of the entire pair. Both older adults in the full-attention condition and younger adults in the divided-attention condition performed more poorly than younger adults in the full-attention condition, with the deficit in associative information being greater than the deficit in item information. In addition, a differentially greater associative decrement was found for the older adults, as shown by their heightened tendency to make false-alarm responses to re-paired (conjunction) distractors. The results are discussed in terms of an age-related reduction in processing resources compounded by an age-related increase in older adults' reliance on familiarity in associative recognition memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)