Psychology and AgingPub Date : 2024-08-01Epub Date: 2024-02-29DOI: 10.1037/pag0000800
Julie Ober Allen, Valerie Moïse, Erica Solway, Marshall K Cheney, Daniel Joseph Larson, Preeti N Malani, Dianne Singer, Jeffrey T Kullgren
{"title":"How old do I look? Aging appearance and experiences of aging among U.S. adults ages 50-80.","authors":"Julie Ober Allen, Valerie Moïse, Erica Solway, Marshall K Cheney, Daniel Joseph Larson, Preeti N Malani, Dianne Singer, Jeffrey T Kullgren","doi":"10.1037/pag0000800","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000800","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Appearance is an indicator of age and life stage, which are linked to socially salient stereotypes and prejudices. Older adults' appearance-related perceptions and behaviors may affect their experiences of aging within broader society, which may in turn influence health. This study examined associations between two measures related to aging appearance-assessment of one's aging appearance relative to same-age peers and investing time or effort to look younger-positive and negative experiences of aging, and health using multivariable regression. Cross-sectional data were from a nationally representative sample of 2006 U.S. adults ages 50-80 (<i>M</i><sub>age</sub> = 63, 52% women, 71% White) who completed Wave 6 of the National Poll on Healthy Aging in 2019. The majority (59%) reported appearing relatively younger than peers, while fewer reported appearing the same age (35%) or older (6%). About a third (35%) reported investing in looking younger. Appearing relatively younger was associated with more positive (<i>p</i> < .001) and less negative experiences of aging (<i>p</i> = .019). Appearing relatively older showed the opposite relationships (<i>p</i> values < .001). Investing in looking younger was associated with more positive and more negative experiences of aging (<i>p</i> values < .001). Few sociodemographic variations were detected. More positive and less negative experiences of aging were associated with better physical and mental health (<i>p</i> values < .001). While aging appearance is often the basis for jokes, it may affect the quality of older adults' experiences of aging and associated health outcomes. Nuanced findings caution against framing youthful biases in aging appearance and investments in looking younger as solely negative (or positive). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":" ","pages":"551-564"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139997921","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: 2024-05-23DOI: 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":" ","pages":"542-550"},"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":" ","pages":"510-525"},"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":" ","pages":"578-587"},"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}
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":" ","pages":"421-435"},"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":" ","pages":"413-420"},"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}
{"title":"A dual mechanisms of control account of age differences in working memory.","authors":"Chenlingxi Xu, Chang-Mao Chao, Nathan S Rose","doi":"10.1037/pag0000817","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000817","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Age-related differences in working memory (WM) can be large, but the exact sources are unclear. We hypothesized that young adults outperform older adults on WM tasks because they use controlled attention processes to prioritize the maintenance of relevant information in WM in a proactive mode, whereas older adults tend to rely on the strength of familiarity signals to make memory decisions in a reactive mode. We used a WM task that cued participants to prioritize one item over others and presented repeated lure probes that cause errors when one is engaged in a reactive mode. Results showed that, relative to young adults with full attention available to use proactive control during the delays, older adults with full attention (and young adults with divided attention) during the delays had exaggerated error rates to repeated lure probes compared to control probes. When the amount of proactive interference was increased (by repeating stimuli across trials), older adults were able to engage in proactive control, and this eliminated their exaggerated error rate (while young adults with divided attention could not). These results provide evidence for a dual mechanisms of control account of age differences in WM. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":"39 4","pages":"436-455"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141427978","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}
Greta Melega, Fiona Lancelotte, Ann-Kathrin Johnen, Michael Hornberger, Brian Levine, Louis Renoult
{"title":"Evoking episodic and semantic details with instructional manipulation during autobiographical recall.","authors":"Greta Melega, Fiona Lancelotte, Ann-Kathrin Johnen, Michael Hornberger, Brian Levine, Louis Renoult","doi":"10.1037/pag0000821","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000821","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Older adults tend to describe experiences from their past with fewer episodic details, such as spatiotemporal and contextually specific information, but more nonepisodic details, particularly personal semantic knowledge, than younger adults. While the reduction in episodic details is interpreted in the context of episodic memory decline typical of aging, interpreting the increased production of semantic details is not as straightforward. We modified the widely used Autobiographical Interview (AI) to create a Semantic Autobiographical Interview (SAI) that explicitly targets personal (P-SAI) and general semantic memories (G-SAI) with the aim of better understanding the production of semantic information in aging depending on instructional manipulation. Overall, older adults produced a lower proportion of target details than young adults. There was an intra-individual consistency in the production of target details in the AI and P-SAI, suggesting a trait level in the production of personal target details or consistency in the narrative style and communicative goals adopted across interviews. Older adults consistently produced autobiographical facts and self-knowledge across interviews, suggesting that they are biased toward the production of personal semantic information regardless of instructions. These results cannot be easily accommodated by accounts of aging and memory emphasizing reduced cognitive control or compensation for episodic memory impairment. Nevertheless, future work is needed to fully disentangle between these accounts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":"39 4","pages":"378-390"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141427979","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}
Bianca Suanet, Johanna Drewelies, Sandra Duezel, Peter Eibich, Ilja Demuth, Elisabeth Steinhagen-Thiessen, Gert G Wagner, Ulman Lindenberger, Nilam Ram, Paolo Ghisletta, Denis Gerstorf
{"title":"Historical change in trajectories of loneliness in old age: Older adults today are less lonely, but do not differ in their age trajectories.","authors":"Bianca Suanet, Johanna Drewelies, Sandra Duezel, Peter Eibich, Ilja Demuth, Elisabeth Steinhagen-Thiessen, Gert G Wagner, Ulman Lindenberger, Nilam Ram, Paolo Ghisletta, Denis Gerstorf","doi":"10.1037/pag0000803","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000803","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>To check claims of a \"loneliness epidemic,\" we examined whether current cohorts of older adults report higher levels and/or steeper age-related increases in loneliness than earlier-born peers. Specifically, we used 1,068 age-matched longitudinal reports (M<sub>age observations</sub> = 79 years, 49% women) of loneliness provided by independent samples recruited in the German city of Berlin in 1990 and 2010, n = 257 participants in the Berlin Aging Study (BASE) and n = 383 participants in Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II). Using multilevel models that orthogonalize between-person and within-person age effects, we examined how responses to items from the UCLA Loneliness Scale provided by observation-matched cohorts differed with age and across cohorts, and if those differences might be explained by a variety of individual factors. Results revealed that at age 79, the later-born BASE-II cohort reported substantially lower levels of loneliness than the earlier-born BASE cohort (d = -0.84), with cohort differences accounting for more than 14% of the variance in loneliness. Age trajectories, however, were parallel without evidence of cohort differences in rates of within-person age-related changes in loneliness. Differences in gender, education, cognitive functioning, and external control beliefs accounted for the lion's share of cohort-related differences in levels of loneliness. Results show that loneliness among older adults has shifted to markedly lower levels today, but the rate at which loneliness increases with age proceeds similarly as 2 decades ago. Future studies should investigate how psychosocial functioning across the life course is progressing in different sociohistorical contexts and in other age groups, such as younger and middle-aged adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":"39 4","pages":"350-363"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141427980","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":"Age-related differences in the evaluation of highly arousing language.","authors":"Meredith A Shafto, Lise Abrams, Lori E James","doi":"10.1037/pag0000809","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000809","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Emotional properties of words can profoundly affect their processing, depending on both the valence (pleasantness) and the degree of arousal (excitation) that the word elicits. Words that are strongly emotionally arousing (such as taboo words) can interfere with subsequent language processing (White & Abrams, 2021). However, little is known about whether or how aging affects the processing of highly arousing language. The present study provides a characterization of how adults across the lifespan evaluate highly arousing language with a simple rating task that included taboo words, which have previously been used to examine lexical interference caused by arousal, and humorous words, which are also highly arousing without being negatively valenced. While arousal ratings were strongly positively correlated with both tabooness and humor ratings for young adults, these relationships weakened with age and overall arousal ratings were lower for middle-aged and older adults compared to young adults. Age effects cannot be readily accounted for by age-related differences in psychosocial variables such as self-reported profanity avoidance or religiosity. The effect of age on arousal should be considered in the design of studies examining age-related changes in emotional language processing. Furthermore, age differences in arousal should be considered as a potential mechanism in studies exploring emotional language processing across adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":"39 3","pages":"288-298"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141201142","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}