Cognitive and sensory declines in old age: Gauging the evidence for a common cause.

Resource accounts of behavioral aging postulate that age-associated impairments within and across intellectual and sensory domains reflect, in part, a common set of senescent alterations in the neurochemistry and neuroanatomy of the aging brain. Hence, these accounts predict sizeable correlations of between-person differences in rates of decline, both within and across intellectual and sensory domains. The authors examined reliability-adjusted variances and covariances in longitudinal change for 8 cognitive measures and for close visual acuity, distant visual acuity, and hearing in 516 participants in the Berlin Aging Study (ages 70 to 103 years at 1st measurement). Up to 6 longitudinal measurements were distributed over up to 13 years. Individual differences in rates of cognitive decline were highly correlated, with a single factor accounting for 60% of the variance in cognitive change. This amount increased to 65% when controlling for age at first measurement, distance to death, and risk of dementia. Contrary to expectations, the correlations between cognitive and sensory declines were only moderate in size, underscoring the need to delineate both domain-general and function-specific mechanisms of behavioral senescence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Life satisfaction shows terminal decline in old age: Longitudinal evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP).

Longitudinal data spanning 22 years, obtained from deceased participants of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP; N = 1,637; 70- to 100-year-olds), were used to examine if and how life satisfaction exhibits terminal decline at the end of life. Changes in life satisfaction were more strongly associated with distance to death than with distance from birth (chronological age). Multiphase growth models were used to identify a transition point about 4 years prior to death where the prototypical rate of decline in life satisfaction tripled from -0.64 to -1.94 T-score units per year. Further individual-level analyses suggest that individuals dying at older ages spend more years in the terminal periods of life satisfaction decline than individuals dying at earlier ages. Overall, the evidence suggests that late-life changes in aspects of well-being are driven by mortality-related mechanisms and characterized by terminal decline. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Highly parallel, fast scaling of numbers in nonredundant residuearithmetic

A new approach to scaling in the nonredundant residue number system (RNS) with the use of the Chinese remainder theorem (CRT) is presented. The auxiliary scaling by M, where M is the number range, is performed in parallel with scaling by the scale factor K in order to avoid the number range overflow. The scaler design utilizes small look-up tables and multioperand (both modulo and binary) adders. The new approach does not impose restrictions on the form, size, and number of moduli n. The only proviso is that K>n. The scaling error is bounded by n and can be reduced to 1 or 1.5 if a correction circuit is employed. Hardware complexity expressed by the number of transistors is approximately one order smaller than that for the earlier design, whereas the scaler latency is similar     

Intellectual functioning in old and very old age: Cross-sectional results from the Berlin Aging Study.

This study documents age trends, interrelations, and correlates of intellectual abilities in old and very old age (70–103 years) from the Berlin Aging Study (N?=?516). Fourteen tests were used to assess 5 abilities: reasoning, memory, and perceptual speed from the mechanic (broad fluid) domain and knowledge and fluency from the pragmatic (broad crystallized) domain. Intellectual abilities had negative linear age relations, with more pronounced age reductions in mechanic than in pragmatic abilities. Interrelations among intellectual abilities were highly positive and did not follow the mechanic-pragmatic distinction. Sociobiographical indicators were less closely linked to intellectual functioning than sensory-sensorimotor variables, which predicted 59% of the total reliable variance in general intelligence. Results suggest that aging-induced biological factors are a prominent source of individual differences in intelligence in old and very old age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social Participation Attenuates Decline in Perceptual Speed in Old and Very Old Age.

Does an engaged and active lifestyle in old age alleviate cognitive decline, does high cognitive functioning in old age increase the possibility of maintaining an engaged and active lifestyle, or both? The authors approach this conundrum by applying a structural equation model for testing dynamic hypotheses, the dual change score model (J. J. McArdle & F. Hamagami, 2001), to 3-occasion longitudinal data from the Berlin Aging Study (Time 1: n = 516, age range = 70-103 years). Results reveal that within a bivariate system of perceptual speed and social participation, with age and sociobiographical status as covariates, prior scores of social participation influence subsequent changes in perceptual speed, while the opposite does not hold. Results support the hypothesis that an engaged and active lifestyle in old and very old age may alleviate decline in perceptual speed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-Based Structural Dynamics Between Perceptual Speed and Knowledge in the Berlin Aging Study: Direct Evidence for Ability Dedifferentiation in Old Age.

According to 2-component theories of intelligence, negative cross-sectional age gradients in mechanic (broad Gf) and pragmatic (broad Gc) cognitive components reflect the increasing constraining of the former in the expression and integrity of the latter component. The authors examined this widely held but untested assumption by applying a recently proposed dynamic structural modeling technique, the bivariate dual change score model, to longitudinal data from the Berlin Aging Study (N=516, age range=70-103 years). Mechanics and pragmatics were indexed by perceptual speed and knowledge, respectively. As hypothesized, results indicated that changes in knowledge are dominated by perceptual speed and offered strong support for the notion of "mechanization" of pragmatic abilities in old and very old age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Functions, operations, and decalage in the development of transitivity.

The hypothesis that some attempts to reduce the performance demands of concrete operational tasks may have allowed children to solve those tasks with preoperational functions was tested by administering two previously used versions of the transitivity task for length and weight to 120 children 6 to 9 years of age. In the standard Piagetian version of the task, comparison objects were presented only two at a time, with no correlation between length or weight, but placed too far apart for differences to be seen. As predicted: (a) the standard version was solvable only through an operational composition of premise relations, but the alternate version allowed children to recode length or weight as a function of spatial position; (b) the functional solution was easier and developed at an earlier age than the operational solution for length as for weight. In addition, the decalage between length and weight was found to result from children's tendency to infer weight as a function of size rather than from an operational composition of premise relations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cross-sectional age variance extraction: What's change got to do with it?

In cross-sectional age variance extraction (CAVE), age, the indicator of a hypothesized developmental mechanism, and a developmental outcome are specified as independent, mediator, and target variables, respectively, to test hypotheses about behavioral development. We show that: (a) longitudinal change in a mediator variable accounting for substantial cross-sectional age-related variance in the target variable need not correlate with the target variable's longitudinal change; and, conversely, (b) longitudinal change in a mediator not sharing cross-sectional age-related variance with the target variable may nevertheless correlate highly with that variable's longitudinal change. We discourage use of CAVE for testing multivariate hypotheses about behavioral development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Embryonal carcinoma in a 16-year patient

The authors present diagnostic and therapeutic documentation of a very rare case of a tumour with carcinoma embryonal in a 16-year old girl. After the surgery (total hysterectomy and adnexectomy) followed by chemotherapy, the patient survived four years.