Recollection- and familiarity-based memory in healthy aging and amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

Little is known about the cognitive mechanisms of the memory impairment associated with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). We explored recollection and familiarity in 27 healthy young adults, 45 healthy older adults, and 17 individuals with aMCI. Relative to the younger adults, recollection was reduced in the older adults, especially among those with aMCI. Familiarity did not differ among groups. In the healthy younger and older adults, better performance on a set of clinical memory measures that are sensitive to medial temporal lobe functioning was associated with greater recollection. In addition, among the healthy older adults better executive functioning was also associated with greater recollection. These results are consistent with the notion that recollection is a product of strategic processes mediated by the prefrontal cortex that suppport the retrieval of context-dependent memories from the hippocampus. Hippocampal atrophy associated with aMCI may disrupt this brain network, and thereby interfere with recollection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparison of higher order auditory processes in younger and older adults.

The authors conducted 3 experiments investigating the effects of aging on higher order auditory processes. They compared younger and older adults with respect to (a) their auditory channel capacity, (b) the extent of their top-down control over auditory gain, and (c) their ability to focus attention on a narrow band of frequencies. To ensure that subclinical cochlear processing deficits in older adults (e.g., higher thresholds, poorer discrimination of frequency and intensity differences) did not limit performance, the authors used only stimuli that were perfectly discriminable by all participants. No age differences were found in any of these experiments, suggesting that some higher order auditory processes (e.g., top-down control over auditory gain, auditory attention) are preserved in normal aging, despite numerous age-related declines in peripheral auditory functionality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychosocial adjustment among cancer survivors: Findings from a national survey of health and well-being.

Objective: The current study examined whether cancer survivors showed impairment, resilience, or growth responses relative to a sociodemographically matched sample in four domains: mental health and mood, psychological well-being, social well-being, and spirituality. The impact of aging on psychosocial adjustment was also investigated. Design: Participants were 398 cancer survivors who were participants in the MIDUS survey (Midlife in the United States) and 796 matched respondents with no cancer history. Psychosocial assessments were completed in 1995–1996 and 2004–2006. Main Outcome Measures: Outcomes including self-report measures of mental health and mood, psychological well-being, social well-being, and spirituality. Results: Findings indicated that cancer survivors demonstrated impairment relative to the comparison group in mental health, mood, and some aspects of psychological well-being. Longitudinal analyses spanning pre- and postdiagnosis clarified that while mental health declined after a cancer diagnosis, poorer functioning in other domains existed prior to diagnosis. However, survivors exhibited resilient social well-being, spirituality, and personal growth. Moreover, age appeared to confer resiliency; older survivors were more likely than younger adults to show psychosocial functioning equivalent to their peers. Conclusion: While younger survivors may be at risk for disturbances in mental health and mood, cancer survivors show resilience in other important domains of psychosocial adjustment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intraindividual variability in HIV infection: Evidence for greater neurocognitive dispersion in older HIV seropositive adults.

Objective: Both the prevalence and incidence of HIV infection among older adults are on the rise. Older adults are at increased risk of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders, which have historically been characterized as an inconsistent or “spotty” pattern of deficits. Dispersion is a form of intraindividual variability (IIV) that is defined as within-person variability in performance across domains and has been associated with poorer neurocognitive functioning and incipient decline among healthy older adults. To our knowledge, no studies have yet examined dispersion in an aging HIV-infected sample. Method: For the current study we examined the hypothesis that age and HIV infection have synergistic effects on dispersion across a battery of clinical and experimental cognitive tasks. Our well-characterized sample comprised 126 HIV-seropositive individuals (HIV+) and 40 HIV-seronegative comparison individuals (HIV?), all of whom were administered a comprehensive neuropsychological battery. Results: Consistent with our hypothesis, an age by HIV serostatus interaction was observed, with the older HIV+ group demonstrating a higher level of dispersion relative to older HIV? and younger HIV+ individuals, even when potentially confounding demographic and medical factors were controlled. Conclusion: Our results demonstrate that older HIV+ adults produce greater dispersion, or intraindividual variability in performance across a range of tests, which may be reflective of cognitive dyscontrol to which this population is vulnerable, perhaps driven by the combined effects of aging and HIV infection on prefrontostriatal systems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

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

The current study examines how the aging relevance of anxiety triggers, particularly those tied to physical threat, influences the expression of anxiety in older and younger adults. It was expected that older adults would exhibit less anxiety than younger adults in response to nonphysical triggers but that this age-related difference would diminish when faced with physical triggers. Anxiety responses were measured in older (N = 49, ages 60–85) and younger (N = 49, ages 17–34) adults in response to (a) physical and social anxiety provocations, and (b) a threat interpretation measure. Consistent with hypotheses, results for the anxiety provocations indicated less anxiety among older (vs. younger) adults on a range of anxiety measures (affective, cognitive, physiological) when triggers did not concern physical health, but this age difference diminished when physical health was threatened. Older adults actually reported more threat interpretations than younger adults to physical threat scenarios. Findings are discussed in terms of the aging relevance of anxiety triggers and theoretical accounts of age-related changes in emotional processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptions of intergenerational communication by young, middle-aged, and older Canadians.

Young, middle-aged, and older Canadians (N = 240) evaluated their past communicative experiences with older and younger adults who were not family as well as undertaking an age-stereotyping task. The latter showed that ratings of attributed benevolence increased with target age but personal vitality declined; young raters attributed older people with the least personal vitality. Communication with older targets was rated more negatively in terms of their being more nonaccommodating and avoided. Although these (and other) differences were more evident for young respondents, older adults, too, indicated problems communicating with same-aged peers. Middle-aged respondents rated communication experiences similarly to their older counterparts. The study also examined whether the communication variables predicted older people's psychological functioning. In contrast to the intergenerational focus of the communication predicament model of aging, perceived accommodation from other older adults predicted life satisfaction and age group esteem. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gender differences among recreational gamblers: Association with the frequency of alcohol use.

This study examines the interactive effects of alcohol use and gender on health and gambling attitudes and behaviors in recreational gamblers. The Gambling Impact and Behavior Study (D. Gerstein et al., 1999) surveyed by telephone 2,417 adults targeted to be representative of the U.S. adult population. The authors compared male and female recreational gamblers (n = 1,471) who were stratified by frequency of alcohol use on measures of health and gambling. Significant Gender × Alcohol Use group interactions were observed such that moderate-to-high frequency alcohol consumption correlated with heavier gambling in men than in women, whereas such an association did not exist among abstinent or low frequency drinkers. There were few gender differences in the correlations between alcohol consumption and health. Future research should consider gender-related influences when examining alcohol use and gambling behaviors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inferences about age impairments in inferential reasoning.

Two experiments are reported in which specially constructed series completion tests were administered to samples of young and older adults to determine why increased age is associated with poorer performance on measures of inductive reasoning. The results indicated that young and older adults did not differ significantly in the effectiveness of processes concerned with determining simple relations, but that older adults were impaired when the relations are complex or when different problems involve alternative organizational patterns. We conclude that the poorer performance of older adults relative to young adults on tasks of this type may be due to inadequate (e.g., overly simplistic or temporally instable) relational structures for the integration of problem elements. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging, source memory, and emotion.

In 2 experiments we assessed younger and older adults' ability to remember contextual information about an event. Each experiment examined memory for 3 different types of contextual information: (a) perceptual information (e.g., location of an item); (b) conceptual, nonemotional information (e.g., quality of an item); and (c) conceptual, emotional information (e.g., safety of an item). Consistent with a large literature on aging and source memory, younger adults outperformed older adults when the contextual information was perceptual in nature and when it was conceptual, but not emotional. Age differences in source memory were eliminated, however, when participants recalled emotional source information. These findings suggest that emotional information differentially engages older adults, possibly evoking enhanced elaborations and associations. The data are also consistent with a growing literature, suggesting that emotional processing remains stable with age (e.g., Carstensen & Turk-Charles, 1994, 1998; Isaacowitz, Charles, & Carstensen, 2000). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Characteristics of problem gamblers 56 years of age or older: A statewide study of casino self-excluders.

Gambling among older adults appears to be increasing, though little is known about the characteristics of older adult problem gamblers. The purpose of this study was to compare older adults to younger and middle-aged adults in a cohort of problem gamblers participating in a state-administered casino self-exclusion program. Self-reported problem gamblers (N = 1,601) who voluntary banned themselves from Missouri casinos from 2001 to 2003 were categorized by age as younger adults (ages 21 to 35; n = 490), middle-aged adults (ages 36 to 55; n = 950), and older adults (ages 56 to 79; n = 161), and were compared with respect to demographic variables, gambling participation, and reasons for self-exclusion. Older adult self-excluders typically began gambling in midlife, experienced gambling problems around age 60, reported preferences for nonstrategic forms of gambling, and identified fear of suicide as the primary reason for self-excluding. Implications for intervention, prevention and treatment are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Empathy across the adult lifespan: Longitudinal and experience-sampling findings.

This study examined change in self-reported empathy in a four-wave longitudinal study spanning 12 years (1992-2004) and the association between empathy and other measures, including daily reports of relationship experiences. Participants initially ranged in age from 10 years to 87 years. Cross-sectional and longitudinal associations of age with empathy revealed divergent patterns. Whereas cross-sectional analyses suggested that older adults scored lower in empathy than younger adults, longitudinal analyses showed no age-related decline in empathy. This combined pattern suggests that the cross-sectional age-differences reflect a cohort rather than an age effect, with older cohorts reporting lower levels of empathy than younger ones. Independent of age, empathy was associated with a positive well-being (e.g., life satisfaction) and interaction profile (e.g., positive relations with others). In addition, a subsample of participants (n = 114) conducted experience-sampling about social interactions for a week. People with high self-reported empathy perceived their interactions as more meaningful, felt more positive in these interactions, and thought that their interaction partner felt also more positive. Thus, self-reported empathy was meaningfully associated with adults' actual social interactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unasked-for support and unsolicited advice: Age and the quality of social experience.

The recent study (N?=?122) examined whether older adults (M?=?79 years) differed from younger age groups (Ms?=?25 and 45 years) in their experience of 35 situations of unsolicited support selected from 7 content areas (e.g., health, cognition, finances, life management). Examined were reported occurrence, affective quality, interpretation, and strategies used when support was unwelcome. At all ages, unasked-for support was regarded as more unpleasant than pleasant, primarily because it implied incompetence. Unexpectedly, compared with the younger adults, older adults reported less occurrence overall (with some variations by content area) but the same level of unpleasant affect. Cognitive and social-relational factors that are age related (e.g., the use of active discounting strategies) played a role in reported occurrence and affective appraisal and may determine whether unsolicited support has positive or negative outcomes. (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)     

Supportive relationships in later life.

Adopted a multidimensional approach to the study of the social support convoys of older adults. We distinguished between age and gender differences in 4 specific dimensions of the social support convoy: (a) existence vs functioning of relationships in the convoy, (b) kinds of relationships (i.e., those with children, siblings, friends), (c) types of social support (i.e., emotional support, respect, health support), and (d) receipt vs provision of support. Ss were 718 adults. We found that older people received less support (i.e., emotional and health support) in the absence of sibling relationships. Otherwise, the effects of aging had more to do with what the older person contributed to the convoy than with what he or she received. Women had better social support resources than men, particularly within friendships. We found no evidence, however, that women's social support advantage counterbalanced the effects of aging on the convoy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit learning of higher order sequences in middle age.

Previous studies have demonstrated age-related implicit learning of higher order sequences in coparisons of college-age and elderly adults (e.g., J. H. Howard & D. V. Howard, 1997). This study examined whether these age deficits begin in middle age. Results showed a reliable age-related deficit in pattern sensitivity in "older" compared with "younger" middle-aged people, and age reliably predicted sensitivity to the sequence by using both speed and accuracy measures. The results are consistent with an age-related decline in a generic cognitive resource as reflected in T. A. Salthouse's (1996) simultaneity mechanism of cognitive aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The mental health system and older adults in the 1990s.

Trends in mental health services for older adults during the past decade were used to predict salient issues for the current decade. These include overreliance on inpatient treatment, increased use of general hospitals as treatment sites, inadequate integration with the nursing-home industry, and insufficient mental health referrals from general medical providers. In the decade ahead, the mental health needs of older adults are unlikely to be an identified focus; rather, the issues will overlap with other priorities (e.g., biomedical research on brain functioning, alternative treatment programs for the chronically mentally ill, and containing health care costs). Advocates for the elderly will be successful to the extent that they cast aging services within the context of these other concerns. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Asymmetric aging effects on semantic and phonological processes: Naming in the picture-word interference task.

In 2 experiments, participants named pictures while ignoring auditory word distractors. For pictures with homophone names (e.g., ball, distractors semantically related to the nondepicted meaning (e.g., prom) facilitated naming by top-down phonological connections for young but not for older adults. Slowing from unrelated distractors and facilitation from phonologically related distractors were age invariant except in distractors that were both semantically and phonologically related. Only distractors semantically related to the picture interfered more for older than younger adults. These results are inconsistent with age-linked deficits in inhibition of irrelevant information from either internal or external sources. Rather, aging affects priming transmission in a connectionist network with asymmetric effects on semantic and phonological connections involved in comprehension and production, respectively. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related changes in the integration of gaze direction and facial expressions of emotion.

Gaze direction influences younger adults' perception of emotional expressions, with direct gaze enhancing the perception of anger and joy, while averted gaze enhances the perception of fear. Age-related declines in emotion recognition and eye-gaze processing have been reported, indicating that there may be age-related changes in the ability to integrate these facial cues. As there is evidence of a positivity bias with age, age-related difficulties integrating these cues may be greatest for negative emotions. The present research investigated age differences in the extent to which gaze direction influenced explicit perception (e.g., anger, fear and joy; Study 1) and social judgments (e.g., of approachability; Study 2) of emotion faces. Gaze direction did not influence the perception of fear in either age group. In both studies, age differences were found in the extent to which gaze direction influenced judgments of angry and joyful faces, with older adults showing less integration of gaze and emotion cues than younger adults. Age differences were greatest when interpreting angry expressions. Implications of these findings for older adults' social functioning are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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)     

Subjective well-being evaluations among older Black Americans.

The causal relations among social status and resource, health, and stress factors, and a single-item measure of subjective well-being (i.e., happiness) were examined among a national sample of 581 Black adults aged 55 years and over. Results indicated that although social status and resource factors had a limited impact on happiness ratings, these measures were important in predicting intermediate factors related to health status and satisfaction and stress. Happiness was directly influenced by stress and reported satisfaction with health, whereas the effect of health disability was mediated by stress and health satisfaction. The findings suggest that certain groups of older Blacks (i.e., relatively younger, widowed, and separated) may be at specific risk for diminished well-being. However, adverse health and life conditions, which are determined by status and resources, represent circumstances that further jeopardize the well-being of older Black adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)