Adults' conceptions of intelligence across the adult life span.

To examine whether young, middle-aged, and older adults view the concept of intelligent person as similar or different during adulthood, 140 adults of various ages rated how likely it would be for individuals of average and exceptional intelligence at 30, 50, and 70 yrs of age to be engaged in behaviors previously identified by adults as characterizing adult intelligence. Adults perceived more similarity between exceptionally intelligent prototypes of closer ages (i.e., 30 and 50 yrs; 50 and 70 yrs). Intelligence was perceived to consist of interest and ability to deal with novelty, everyday competence, and verbal competence (dimensions that were perceived to be differentially important for different-aged prototypes and by individuals of different ages). Participants' conceptions also included the idea that intelligence is malleable and that abilities differentially increase or decrease across the life span. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interrelationships among everyday memory tests: Stability of factor structure with age.

Conducted an experiment in which 158 normal adults (aged 18–77 yrs) completed a battery of tests employing computer and laser-disk technology to simulate learning and memory tasks encountered in daily life. The tests were based on different experimental paradigms and were designed to assess multiple variables related to memory performance across the adult age span. Principal components analyses yielded factors of general memory, attention, and psychomotor speed. The factors remained essentially unchanged when scores were residualized to account for differences in performance related to age. Clinical and research applications of the battery are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dimensions of everyday memory in age-associated memory impairment.

A battery of tests that uses computer and laser disk technology to simulate learning and memory tasks of everyday life, such as recalling names after introduction and remembering items on a grocery list, is described. The performance of 110 persons suffering Age-Associated Memory Impairment was factor analyzed and yielded everyday memory dimensions of verbal memory, visual memory, psychomotor speed, attention, and vigilance. These computerized performance dimensions are associated with relevant standard clinical measures of memory performance, such as the Benton Visual Retention Test and the Wechsler Memory Scale Paired-Associated Learning and Logical Memory subtests. The clinical and research utility of the computerized measures and the new diagnostic category of Age-Associated Memory Impairment are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prospective/intentional and incidental everyday memory: Effects of age and passage of time.

Investigated the effects of age and passage of time on incidental and prospective/intentional everyday memory. 79 23–93 yr old volunteers were tested twice, and 33 of the Ss were tested 3 times over an 18-mo period. They were asked to recognize or recall, either in writing or orally, experiences from a 3-day period in which they served as research Ss. Results demonstrate that incidental, but not prospective/intentional, memory appeared to be influenced by age and passage of time. Results imply that salience and context are important factors in aging memory performance and that certain types of everyday retrospective reports may be reliable. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adults' knowledge about memory: Awareness and use of memory strategies across tasks.

Two studies investigated college students' knowledge about the effectiveness of alternative memory strategies for different tasks and the relationship of this knowledge to strategy use and performance. In Experiment 1 students made paired-comparison judgments of the relative effectiveness of six strategies for increasing performance on one of three memory tasks. For each task some strategies were judged to be significantly more effective than others, whereas across tasks certain strategies were more likely to be judged effective for one task than for another. Experiment 2 examined the relationship of judgments of strategy effectiveness to actual strategy use and memory performance. Results indicated that different strategies were adopted across tasks and students were more likely to adopt strategies subsequently judged effective for that task. Students in Experiment 2 showed clearer discrimination among the strategies and an increased awareness of the efficacy of task-specific strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stability of everyday memory in age-associated memory impairment: A longitudinal study.

Everyday memory performance was examined longitudinally in 2 groups of Ss meeting the diagnostic criteria for age-associated memory impairment (AAMI). One group of 157 participants in a drug trial for reversing memory loss in AAMI was tested over multiple sessions. The other group of 75 persons did not participate in a drug trial and thus was tested only twice. Both groups were retested for longitudinal follow-up about 4 yrs after initial session. Follow-up test performance remained fairly stable relative to initial performance in both groups. The drug study group showed large practice effects during the course of the drug studies, but these effects subsided after the drug studies' end. Implications regarding memory decline in the normal elderly and neuropsychological measurement issues are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Structure of everyday memory in adults with age-associated memory impairment.

Everyday memory was tested in a group of adults manifesting Age-Associated Memory Impairment; a computerized battery of tests was constructed to simulate memory tasks of daily life. Confirmatory and other structural equation models were estimated for the entire sample of 273 Ss and for 3 age groups. A 4-factor model was found to fit the data well and was invariant across age and gender. After education had been controlled, only the General Recall factor was found to be consistently related to age in both men and women; the other 3 factors—Narrative Memory, Digit Recall, and Visual Memory—were related to age only in men. Confirmatory factor analyses of the everyday memory tests combined with several psychometric memory tests suggested that some of the latter (the Benton Visual Retention Test and Wechsler Memory Scale Hard Paired Associates) load on more than 1 factor of everyday memory, suggesting complex relationships between the 2 types of tests. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prospective memory in children: The effects of age and task interruption.

Prospective memory (PM), remembering to carry out a task in the future, is highly relevant to children's everyday functioning, yet relatively little is known about it. For these reasons the effects of age and task interruption on PM were studied in 3 experiments. Children aged 4, 5, and 7 years were asked to name pictures in stacks of cards (the ongoing task) and to remember to do something when they saw a target picture (the PM task). Significant age differences were identified, but age explained only a small amount of variance. As predicted, children in the no-interruption condition performed significantly better than those who had to interrupt the ongoing activity in order to carry out the PM task. An additional finding was that no relation was detected between performance on prospective and retrospective memory tasks. Taken together, these findings provide support for current models of PM and identify ways to assist children's PM. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prospective memory across adolescence: The effects of age and cue focality.

The present study examined the role of controlled attention in age differences in event-based prospective memory performance across adolescence. The researchers tested whether presenting the prospective memory cue in or out of focal awareness of the ongoing task (resulting in low versus high demands for controlled attention, respectively) might affect age-related prospective memory performance. In total, 119 Chinese participants ages 13 to 20 took part in this study (60 adolescents: age M = 13.26 years, SD = 0.50; 23 boys; 59 young adults: age M = 19.70 years, SD = 0.87; 19 men). Findings demonstrated a significant interaction, F(1, 114) = 6.41, p     

Self-presentation in everyday interactions: Effects of target familiarity and gender composition.

Examined people's self-presentational motives in unstructured, everyday social interaction as a function of participants' gender similarity to, and general familiarity with, the targets of their self-presentations. Participants maintained a variant of the Rochester Interaction Record for 1 wk. For every interaction that lasted 10 min or more, they rated the degree to which they wanted to make each of 4 impressions (likable, competent, ethical, and attractive), how much they thought about the impressions others in the interaction formed of them, and how nervous they felt in the interaction. In general, participants' self-presentational motives were lower in interactions with highly familiar people of their own sex than they were either in interactions with less familiar people of their sex or in interactions with people of the other sex regardless of familiarity. When participants' interactions with only their 3 most familiar interactants were examined, self-presentational concerns decreased with familiarity in same-sex interactions but increased with familiarity in cross-sex interactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in everyday memory: Laboratory analogues of telephone number recall.

Three experiments were conducted to examine age differences in memory for telephone numbers by adults ranging from 18 to 85 yrs of age. In the 1st 2 studies, using visual simultaneous presentation, age declines in immediate recall were evident on 10-digit numbers but not on 3-digit numbers. With 7-digit numbers, the youngest group performed significantly better than the oldest (aged 70–85 yrs) group. In the 2nd study, more marked age declines occurred when Ss had to redial a number after a busy signal. The 3rd experiment replicated the observed aging pattern with auditory sequential presentation. Also, chunked presentation of local telephone numbers resulted in high performance for old and young in sequential recall. The findings were discussed in relation to task processing demands and practical issues related to telephone number recall. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential effects of age on involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memory.

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 differences in terms of the effects of age on some memory characteristics. Thus, older adults’ voluntary memories were less specific and were recalled more slowly than those of young adults, but there were no reliable age differences in the specificity of involuntary memories. Moreover, older adults rated their involuntary memories as more positive than did young adults, but this positivity effect was not found for voluntary memories. Theoretical implications of these findings for research on autobiographical memory and cognitive aging are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult age differences in implicit and explicit memory: Time course and encoding effects.

Young and older adults were tested at three delays on word-stem completion or cued recall following semantic or structural word judgments. Identical three-letter stems were present at retrieval for both implicit (completion) and explicit (cued recall) tasks; only the intention to recall list words differed. The young adults outperformed the older adults on both implicit and explicit task at all test delays. Under some conditions, the older but not the young adults performed more poorly on cued recall than on stem completion, suggesting a possible failure to use implicitly available information to support explicit remembering. These results suggest that some forms of implicit memory decline with normal aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential effects of age on item and associative measures of memory: A meta-analysis.

In this meta-analysis, the authors evaluated recent suggestions that older adults' episodic memory impairments are partially due to a reduced ability to encode and retrieve associated/bound units of information. Results of 90 studies of episodic memory for both item and associative information in 3,197 young and 3,192 older adults provided support for the age-related associative/binding deficit suggestion, indicating a larger effect of age on memory for associative information than for item information. Moderators assessed included the type of associations, encoding instructions, materials, and test format. Results indicated an age-related associative deficit in memory for source, context, temporal order, spatial location, and item pairings, in both verbal and nonverbal material. An age-related associative deficit was quite pronounced under intentional learning instructions but was not clearly evident under incidental learning instructions. Finally, test format was also found to moderate the associative deficit, with older adults showing an associative/binding deficit when item memory was evaluated via recognition tests but not when item memory was evaluated via recall tests, in which case the age-related deficits were similar for item and associative information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factors that mediate and moderate the link between partner abuse and suicidal behavior in African American women.

Findings from a study comparing partner abuse in African American women suicide attempters (n?=?148) and nonattempters (n?=?137) revealed higher rates of physical and nonphysical partner abuse among attempters than their demographically similar nonsuicidal counterparts. The partner abuse–suicidal behavior link was mediated by psychological distress, hopelessness, and drug use and moderated by social support. Results also revealed that nonphysical partner abuse accounted for unique variance in the prediction of suicide attempt status beyond that attributable to childhood maltreatment. Implications of the findings for assessing both suicidal and abused women are discussed, and recommendations for preventive interventions for women at risk for suicidal behavior are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Two modulatory effects of attention that mediate object categorization in human cortex

Attentional modulation of cortical activity was examined by varying the rate of visual stimuli in object categorization tasks according to single and conjoined features. Activation of dorsolateral frontal cortex was independent of the stimulus presentation rate and elicited by the participant's attention to conjoined compared with single features. Several cortical regions showed attentionally modulated activity. In inferior temporal cortex, modulation was due to an additional bias signal underlying normal rate-correlated activity. In two other regions (premotor cortex and cerebellum), attention modified the correlation of activity and the stimulus presentation rate. Attentional effects in the human cortex are expressed by at least two physiologically distinct mechanisms acting on spatially distributed areas.     

The role of problem definitions in understanding age and context effects on strategies for solving everyday problems.

The participants (107 preadolescents, 124 college students, 118 middle-aged adults, and 131 older adults) described 2 everyday problems (1 unconstrained, the other constrained to 1 of 6 domains) that they experienced and their goals and strategies. Problem definitions reflected interpersonal or competence components or both; strategies reflected altering cognitions, actions, or regulating and including others. Age differences in problem definitions were found. For unconstrained-domain problems, age and problem definition were related to strategies; for unconstrained-domain problems age differences in strategies were not found. For constrained-domain problems, strategies related to problem domain and problem definition, with problem definition the better predictor of strategies. The results illustrate the value of individuals' problem definitions for addressing age and context effects on strategies used. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

HIV-associated prospective memory impairment increases risk of dependence in everyday functioning.

HIV infection is associated with impairments in prospective memory (ProM), an aspect of episodic memory that refers to the ability to execute a future intention, such as remembering to take a medication at a specific time. The current study sought to examine the relationship between HIV-associated ProM impairment and the successful management of instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs). In a cohort of 66 HIV-infected individuals, ProM accounted for a significant proportion of variance in self-reported IADL dependence, over and above that which was explained by retrospective memory and by current affective distress. Analysis of component cognitive processes revealed that the relationship between HIV-associated ProM deficits and IADL dependence was driven by impaired cue detection and by deficits in self-initiated intention retrieval. Results were not better explained by demographic factors, HIV disease severity, psychiatric comorbidity, or substance use. Collectively, these data support the potential incremental ecological validity of ProM as a predictor of dependence in IADLs among persons living with HIV infection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)