Psychology and AgingPub Date : 2024-08-01Epub Date: 2024-05-23DOI: 10.1037/pag0000826
Lisa Geraci, Robert Tirso, Renee Hunsberger, Gabriel D Saenz, Steve Balsis
{"title":"An examination of younger and older adults' age preferences.","authors":"Lisa Geraci, Robert Tirso, Renee Hunsberger, Gabriel D Saenz, Steve Balsis","doi":"10.1037/pag0000826","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000826","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Research suggests that how people feel about aging can contribute to their later physical, cognitive, and mental health. In two studies, we examined younger (ages 18-30) and older adults' (ages 61-70) views about aging by asking them to rate the extent to which they would find it desirable to be various ages between 0 and 120. Participants also indicated both their ideal age (the age at which they would most like to be) and their subjective age (how old they generally feel). Consistent with the previous studies, younger adults' ideal age was significantly younger than older adults' ideal age. Younger adults' subjective age was slightly older than their chronological age, whereas older adults' subjective age was slightly younger than their chronological age. Of interest was the finding that, for older adults, their desirability ratings of various ages gradually decreased after age 35. In contrast, younger adults' desirability ratings decreased precipitously after age 20 and remained low from age 45 through age 90. Results suggest that older adults view middle to later life in a more nuanced manner than younger adults, who viewed middle and later life as being undesirable and homogenous. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141082780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychology and AgingPub Date : 2024-08-01Epub Date: 2024-06-06DOI: 10.1037/pag0000829
Markus Wettstein, Paolo Ghisletta, Denis Gerstorf
{"title":"Feeling older, feeling pain? Reciprocal between-person and within-person associations of pain and subjective age in the second half of life.","authors":"Markus Wettstein, Paolo Ghisletta, Denis Gerstorf","doi":"10.1037/pag0000829","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000829","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Experiencing pain in middle adulthood and old age might be interpreted as a sign of aging and make people feel older, whereas feeling older has behavioral, motivational, and physiological consequences that might increase the risk of pain. We investigated between-person and within-person associations between pain, subjective age, and chronological age in middle-aged and older adults. Data from the German Ageing Survey were used (<i>n</i> = 13,874 who provided more than 32,000 observations, baseline mean age = 62.3 years). The observation period comprised up to 13 years (<i>M</i> = 4 years) and five (<i>M</i> = 2.4) measurement occasions. Based on the longitudinal multilevel regression models, we found significant between-person and within-person effects in both directions, which were small but robust when controlling for sociodemographic variables, depressive symptoms, and number of chronic diseases. At the between-person level, participants reporting overall more severe pain also felt older than others. Likewise, those who felt overall older than others reported more pain. At the within-person level, when participants experienced more pain than they usually do, they also reported feeling older than usual. Likewise, on measurement occasions when participants reported feeling older than usual, they reported more pain than usual. Additionally, those with overall stronger pain exhibited steeper age-related increases in their subjective age than those with less severe pain. Our findings suggest that an older subjective age may operate as both antecedent and consequence of pain, and pain might prompt a steeper increase in subjective age over time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141263222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychology and AgingPub Date : 2024-08-01Epub Date: 2024-06-27DOI: 10.1037/pag0000834
Laura Ceppi, Rossella Di Pierro, Daniele Romano, Giulio Costantini
{"title":"Biopsychosocial well-being of nursing home residents during the COVID-19 pandemic: A 3-year longitudinal study.","authors":"Laura Ceppi, Rossella Di Pierro, Daniele Romano, Giulio Costantini","doi":"10.1037/pag0000834","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000834","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The COVID-19 pandemic was not only a biological challenge, but it also took a toll on the psychological and social well-being of older adults, especially those in nursing homes. This study aims to uncover the impact of the pandemic on the biopsychosocial well-being of nursing home residents, including the role of COVID-19 positivity and social contacts. Using a sample of 247 individuals in two Northern Italian nursing homes over 3 years (2018-2021), the study analyzed a broad range of biopsychosocial variables and traced the frequency of social contacts during the lockdown. The results showed a concerning trend of worsening well-being over time during the pandemic, irrespective of COVID-19 positivity. Surprisingly, the frequency of contacts with family caregivers did not seem to have a protective role, and worsening conditions were associated with an increase in subsequent social contacts. These findings shed light on the dynamics of the biopsychosocial well-being of institutionalized individuals, and they have significant public health implications. By disentangling the roles of the pandemic period, COVID-19 positivity, and social contacts, this study provides insights into the worsening of neuropsychiatric symptoms, as well as functional and clinical indicators, in nursing home residents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141459995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Negative images, regardless of task relevance, distract younger more than older adults.","authors":"Briana L Kennedy, Mara Mather","doi":"10.1037/pag0000837","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000837","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Older adults, compared to younger adults, tend to prioritize positive information more and negative information less. We recently observed this \"positivity effect\" pattern in an emotion-induced blindness task, which measures attention allocated to task-irrelevant emotional stimuli in the way participants are distracted by them. Older adults were less distracted by negative images compared to younger adults. This could represent an age-related priority shift away from negative emotions. However, it could also be that older adults simply do not see negative images presented at a fast rate. A similar possibility is that older adults to fail to engage with negative stimuli because of their complex nature, rather than due to age-related changes in emotional preference per se. In the present study, we tested this possibility by manipulating the required degree of engagement with emotional distractors. Participants completed a modified emotion-induced blindness task, with emotional distractors that were either task irrelevant (younger: <i>n</i> = 48; older: <i>n</i> = 46) or task relevant (younger: <i>n</i> = 48; older: <i>n</i> = 45). The task relevance of distractors did not affect performance. Even though older adults could quickly perceive the negative images, they were less distracted by them compared to younger adults. Current theories of the positivity effect fail to fully account for these positivity effect patterns in attention, especially those that propose mechanisms requiring a substantial time to enact. The current results may require rethinking previous accounts of the positivity effect and highlight the benefits of probing the positivity effect in early cognitive processing stages. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141459996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yi Lin, Fei Xu, Xiaoqing Ye, Huaiyi Zhang, Hongwei Ding, Yang Zhang
{"title":"Age and sex differences in emotion perception are influenced by emotional category and communication channel.","authors":"Yi Lin, Fei Xu, Xiaoqing Ye, Huaiyi Zhang, Hongwei Ding, Yang Zhang","doi":"10.1037/pag0000828","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000828","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sex differences in verbal and nonverbal emotion processing in older individuals are underexplored despite declining emotional performance with age. This study aimed to investigate the nature of sex differences in age-related decline in emotion perception, exploring modulatory effects on communication channels and emotion categories. Seventy-three older adults (43 female participants, aged 60-89 years) and 74 younger adults (37 female participants, aged 18-30 years) completed a task to recognize basic emotions (i.e., anger, happiness, neutrality, sadness) expressed by female or male encoders through verbal (i.e., semantic) and nonverbal (i.e., facial and prosodic) channels. Female participants consistently demonstrated an overall advantage in emotion perception and expression across both age cohorts. In older adults, this superiority was heightened in decoding angry and sad faces, as well as angry prosody and happy and sad semantics. However, older individuals exhibited decreased sensitivities to angry semantics, sad prosody, and neutral prosody from female encoders, whereas they showed heightened sensitivities to happy faces from female encoders and angry faces from male encoders. Both older and younger adults displayed age-related changes in sex interactions specific to emotional categories and channels. But neither own-sex nor opposite-sex bias was systematically observed across the two age groups. These results suggest that explicit emotion processing involves an intricate integration of individual and contextual differences, with significant age and sex interplay linked to specific emotions and channels. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141459994","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nicholas Ichien, Dušan Stamenković, Mary C Whatley, Alan D Castel, Keith J Holyoak
{"title":"Advancing with age: Older adults excel in comprehension of novel metaphors.","authors":"Nicholas Ichien, Dušan Stamenković, Mary C Whatley, Alan D Castel, Keith J Holyoak","doi":"10.1037/pag0000836","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000836","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Older adults may experience certain forms of cognitive decline, but some forms of semantic memory remain intact in older age. To address how metaphor comprehension changes with age and whether metaphor comprehension relies more heavily on analogical reasoning (supported by fluid intelligence) or on conceptual combination (supported by crystalized intelligence), we compared performance of younger and older adults. In two experiments, healthy older adults (54-88 years) scored lower on a measure of fluid intelligence (Ravens Progressive Matrices) but higher on a measure of crystalized intelligence (Mill Hill Vocabulary Test) relative to younger adults (18-34 years). Groups were equally successful in comprehending relatively easy metaphors (Study 1), but older adults showed a striking advantage over younger adults for novel literary metaphors (Study 2). Mixed-effects modeling showed that measures of fluid and crystalized intelligence each made separable contributions to metaphor comprehension for both groups, but older adults relied more on crystalized intelligence than did younger adults. These age-related dissociations clarify cognitive effects of aging and highlight the importance of crystalized intelligence for metaphor comprehension in both younger and older adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141447380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Supplemental Material for Social and General Cognition Are Uniquely Associated With Social Connectedness in Later Life","authors":"","doi":"10.1037/pag0000831.supp","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000831.supp","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141347348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Supplemental Material for Feeling Older, Feeling Pain? Reciprocal Between-Person and Within-Person Associations of Pain and Subjective Age in the Second Half of Life","authors":"","doi":"10.1037/pag0000829.supp","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000829.supp","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141379041","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychology and AgingPub Date : 2024-06-01Epub Date: 2024-05-16DOI: 10.1037/pag0000825
Doug J K Barrett, Claire V Hutchinson, Fengjun Zhang, Hongyu Xie, Jingxin Wang
{"title":"Age-related differences in saccadic indices of top-down guidance via short-term memory during visual search.","authors":"Doug J K Barrett, Claire V Hutchinson, Fengjun Zhang, Hongyu Xie, Jingxin Wang","doi":"10.1037/pag0000825","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000825","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Aging has been associated with significant declines in the speed and accuracy of visual search. These effects have been attributed partly to low-level (bottom-up) factors including reductions in sensory acuity and general processing speed. Aging is also associated with changes in top-down attentional control, but the impact of these on search is less well-understood. The present study investigated age-related differences in top-down attentional control by comparing the speed and accuracy of saccadic sampling in the presence and absence of top-down information about target color in young (YA) and older (OA) observers. Displays contained an equal number of red and blue Landholt stimuli. Targets were distinguished from distractors by a unique orientation, and observers reported the direction of the target's gap on each trial. Single-target cues signaled the color of the target with 100% validity. Dual-target cues indicated the target could be present in either colored subgroup. The results revealed reliable group differences in the benefits associated with top-down information on single-target cues compared to dual-target cues. On single-target searches, OA made significantly more saccades than YA to stimuli in the uncued color subset. Single-target cues also produced a smaller advantage in the time taken to fixate the target in OA compared to YA. These results support an age-related decline in observers' use of top-down information to restrict sequences of saccades to a task-relevant subset of objects during visual search. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140945286","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychology and AgingPub Date : 2024-06-01Epub Date: 2024-02-29DOI: 10.1037/pag0000804
Alan O'Dowd, Rebecca J Hirst, Annalisa Setti, Rose Anne Kenny, Fiona N Newell
{"title":"Is a sex difference in audio-visual temporal precision consistent across age groups? An update on Hernández et al. (2019).","authors":"Alan O'Dowd, Rebecca J Hirst, Annalisa Setti, Rose Anne Kenny, Fiona N Newell","doi":"10.1037/pag0000804","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000804","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Hernández et al. (2019) previously reported independent age and sex differences in temporal audio-visual integration in a large national cohort of older adults. Susceptibility to the sound induced flash illusion (SIFI) at long stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) increased with age and was stronger in older adult females than males. However, it is unclear if this sex difference is stable across age. We reanalyzed the data set used by Hernández et al. (2019) on SIFI performance from 3,479 older adults (<i>M</i><sub>age</sub> = 64.20 years, <i>SD</i> = 7.77, range = 50-93; 56% female) across three age groups (50-64, 65-74, and 75+ years), drawn from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing. For the 70 ms SOA, females were less susceptible to the SIFI than males, irrespective of age. At longer SOAs (150 ms and 230 ms), females aged 50-64 years but not older were more susceptible to the SIFI than age-matched males. These findings extend those of Hernández et al. (2019) by indicating that age and sex can collectively influence the precision of multisensory integration exhibited by older adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139997922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}