{"title":"The visual noise mechanisms underlying sex differences in the aging of global motion perception.","authors":"Xiaojuan Yin, Ting Liu, Kunwei Chen, Bingjie Zhao, Shizhen Yan, Hua Jin","doi":"10.1037/pag0000950","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000950","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Global motion perception (GMP) is essential for tasks such as navigation, speed judgment, and motion-based obstacle avoidance. Previous research has identified sex-asynchronous aging in GMP, with older women showing a more pronounced decline in global motion efficiency than older men. However, the underlying visual mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, random-dot kinematograms and the perceptual template model were employed to investigate the visual noise mechanisms contributing to sex differences in GMP aging. By comparing the differences in visual noise between 106 younger adults (66 women) and 94 older adults (55 women), this study found that, compared to younger adults, both older men and women exhibited a shared aging mechanism characterized by increased internal additive noise and deficits in external noise exclusion. However, further analysis indicated that older women had significantly higher internal noise levels and greater deficits in external noise exclusionthan older men. Moreover, the increase in internal noise was significantly greater than the decrease in external noise exclusion, suggesting that elevated internal noise is the primary factor driving their more pronounced perceptual decline. To our knowledge, this study is the first to apply the perceptual template model to reveal the visual noise mechanisms underlying sex differences in the aging of GMP, offering new insights into the influence of age and sex on motion perception. These findings also provide guidance for potential strategies to improve visual perception in older adults by targeting changes in noise processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":" ","pages":"340-350"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145439574","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 differences in dating app motivations: Implications for well-being in older adulthood.","authors":"Rong Liang, Phoebe E Bailey","doi":"10.1037/pag0000985","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000985","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Dating apps are increasingly used across the adult lifespan, yet little is known about age-related differences in dating app motivations and the links to psychological well-being. In this cross-sectional study, 301 dating app users (18-86 years; <i>M</i> = 52.4, <i>SD</i> = 16.5) self-reported five motivations (social approval, relationship seeking, sexual experience, socializing, and entertainment), as well as life satisfaction, loneliness, and depressive and anxiety symptoms. Older age among dating app users was associated with lesser sexual experience, relationship seeking, and social approval motivations but higher socializing motivation, with no age differences in entertainment motivation. Greater social approval motivation predicted higher levels of loneliness among older adults but not young adults. This suggests that, among older dating app users, greater loneliness may increase the desire to gain social approval, and/or seeking social approval in older age may increase loneliness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2026-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147700386","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}
Angelique I Delarazan, Katherine March, Elena Markantonakis, June Dy, Zachariah M Reagh
{"title":"Aging shifts recall of naturalistic events from temporal to topic organization.","authors":"Angelique I Delarazan, Katherine March, Elena Markantonakis, June Dy, Zachariah M Reagh","doi":"10.1037/pag0000968","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000968","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Aging impacts episodic memories, including the way they are organized. Younger adults often organize items based on temporal context, whereas older adults show greater reliance on semantic relationships. Given that these findings are largely derived from studies using word-lists, an important question remains: Do these phenomena extend to complex, real-world memories that consists of meaningfully connected events? Here, we tested whether younger and older adults differ in the extent to which they organize recall by temporal or topic structure using a naturalistic stimulus. Older (<i>N</i> = 36) and younger (<i>N</i> = 46) participants viewed and recalled an episode of a \"slice-of-life\" television sitcom. We applied list-learning analysis techniques (e.g., lag-conditional response probabilities, temporal clustering, and topic clustering scores) to examine age differences in recall organization. Our results revealed that younger adults showed greater reliance on temporal structure, whereas older adults exhibited increased topic-based clustering. Older adults also showed diminished forward asymmetry even within shared topics, suggesting a broader shift away from fine-grained temporal structure. Despite these organizational differences, overall recall performance did not differ between groups. However, temporal organization was associated with better recall performance across age groups. In addition, we found that events with more causal connections were recalled more than events with fewer causal connections across age groups, demonstrating the critical role of narrative structure in supporting memory retrieval. Together, our results demonstrate that aging shifts the principles underlying memory organization, and highlight the utility of naturalistic paradigms in revealing subtle changes in memory processes across the lifespan. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13055778/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147624455","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Aging and memory for temporal order in naturalistic events.","authors":"Yining Ding, Devon R Alperin, Jeffrey M Zacks","doi":"10.1037/pag0000978","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000978","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Memory for temporal order is traditionally viewed as a type of associative memory that declines with age. However, most of our understanding of age-related change in retrieving specific temporal associations comes from studies that examine the memory of simple, arbitrary lists of items. Relatively less is known about how the learning and retrieval of naturalistic narratives change with age. Narratives are of interest because they incorporate temporal structure characteristic of everyday experience and because their comprehension depends on semantic background knowledge. In this study, younger and older adults read narratives with a two-level hierarchical structure in which fine-grained subevents were nested within larger coarse-grained events. For some narratives, semantic knowledge could be informative about the order of coarse-grained events; for other narratives, knowledge could be informative about the order of fine-grained subevents. After reading, participants completed tests of memory for temporal order and temporal distance. Both younger and older adults took advantage of semantic knowledge about coarse-grained or fine-grained temporal structure to better remember event order, with older adults exhibiting greater knowledge-related benefits. Both groups also remembered pairs of fine-grained events as farther apart when they spanned a coarse-grained event boundary, indicating preserved event-based organization in memory across age. When making metamemory judgments, older adults' confidence ratings were more liberal and less sensitive to their actual memory performance than those of younger adults. Together, these results suggest that the ability to use knowledge about the typical temporal structure of activity to remember specific event sequences is robust across the adult lifespan. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13002118/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147475918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychology and AgingPub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2025-09-15DOI: 10.1037/pag0000934
Marissa A DiGirolamo, Shevaun D Neupert, Derek M Isaacowitz
{"title":"The role of situational factors in momentary emotion regulation tactic and acceptance use in adulthood and older age.","authors":"Marissa A DiGirolamo, Shevaun D Neupert, Derek M Isaacowitz","doi":"10.1037/pag0000934","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000934","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>What role do situational factors play in emotion regulation behavior in everyday life, and is this moderated by age? We present data from a longitudinal experience sampling study (<i>N</i> = 236, ages 18-87) measuring emotion regulation tactic and acceptance use and everyday life situations, with 35 reports over 7 days in three total bursts 4 weeks apart. Older ages were nonlinearly associated with increased likelihood of using positive-approaching tactics, peaking among the oldest individuals. However, tactic use fluctuated with certain self-reported objective situational types and subjective perceived characteristics of situations, with some age-related moderation: Older adults were more likely to use positive-approaching tactics specifically during emotion regulation events involving social interaction. In general, older ages were associated with a lower likelihood of using negative-receding tactics; younger adults were more likely to use these tactics in emotion regulation events involving romantic partners. Age also moderated the use of acceptance in some situations: Older adults were more likely to use emotional acceptance in romantic partner contexts and situational acceptance in objective work-related contexts. Examining emotion regulation tactic and acceptance use within situational contexts may help isolate the specific emotional situations that amplify (or minimize) age differences in emotion regulation behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":" ","pages":"285-302"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12573139/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145066033","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychology and AgingPub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2025-11-10DOI: 10.1037/pag0000938
Sun Ah Lee, Dahlia Mukherjee, Stephanie T Lanza, David M Almeida
{"title":"Longitudinal profiles of affect dynamics in middle and later life: A latent transition analysis.","authors":"Sun Ah Lee, Dahlia Mukherjee, Stephanie T Lanza, David M Almeida","doi":"10.1037/pag0000938","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000938","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Affect dynamics are key indicators of health and well-being across adulthood, yet little is known about their longitudinal changes and correlates. Combining mean levels and daily variability, this study examined latent profiles of affect dynamics and patterns of profile transitions over a 10-year span among middle-aged and older adults. We examined longitudinal data from the Midlife in the United States study, consisting of the second and third waves of daily diary assessments (National Study of Daily Experiences). The analytic sample included 950 U.S. adults with 7,222 days for Wave 2 and 7,580 days for Wave 3 (mean age at Wave 2 = 53 years, range: 34-81; 58% women; 86% White). Two affect dynamic indicators-affective variability and affect mean levels-were derived from eight daily dairy interviews at each wave. Latent profile analyses identified three profiles of affect dynamics: <i>stable positivity, moderately variable,</i> and <i>highly</i> <i>variable negativity</i>. Latent transition analysis revealed that all profiles exhibited moderate transition stability, with individuals generally transitioning toward less variable affectivity profiles 10 years later. Older age was associated with more stable and favorable affectivity profiles, whereas higher depressive symptoms and greater number of chronic conditions were associated with more variable and unfavorable affectivity profiles. These findings highlight the dual aspects of aging in affective well-being, including the benefits of improved affective stability and regulation with age and persistent vulnerabilities contributing to individual differences in affect dynamics. Our study underscores the importance of examining multiple affect dynamic indicators simultaneously to capture the complexity of longitudinal changes in affect dynamics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":" ","pages":"256-267"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12944671/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145490421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Trust the process: Introduction to the special issue on age-related processes in daily life.","authors":"Patrick L Hill, Mathias Allemand","doi":"10.1037/pag0000973","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000973","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Research on aging and adult development often considers how individuals change over the course of years or decades, helping us to characterize patterns of development throughout adulthood. However, accumulating research has highlighted the importance of looking at aging at a more proximal process level, capturing how the lives of adults play out across weeks, days, or even moments. These process-based investigations have provided rich insights into what the aging process looks like \"in-between\" the traditional longer term assessments. This special issue highlights the rich, contextual work that aging and adult development researchers are undertaking at the process level. These articles underscore both that process-oriented research is feasible across multiple constructs, populations, and environments, as well as that such work can provide novel insights into adult development. The current article introduces the special issue by discussing the challenges and opportunities available to adult development researchers who strive to understand the processes underlying the aging process. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":"41 2","pages":"141-145"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147291514","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 : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2025-06-26DOI: 10.1037/pag0000912
William J Chopik, Jonathan Rush, Eric S Cerino
{"title":"Interrelations between daily stress processes and Big Five personality trait changes over 20 years.","authors":"William J Chopik, Jonathan Rush, Eric S Cerino","doi":"10.1037/pag0000912","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000912","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Personality is characterized by continuity and the capacity to change across the lifespan. Integrative personality frameworks imply that variability in daily life experiences has the potential to evoke longer term changes in personality over time. However, strong tests of this assumption across the adult lifespan are relatively rare. We examined the interrelations between changes in daily stress reactivity and changes in Big Five personality traits over a nearly 20-year period. Three measurement bursts from the National Study of Daily Experiences (<i>N</i> = 2,022; 55% female) each included daily measures of stressor exposure and negative affect across eight consecutive days (yielding 33,942 days of data across 18 years of adulthood). At each wave, participants reported on their personality traits (i.e., openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism). Multilevel structural equation modeling simultaneously modeled stress reactivity at Level 1; longitudinal changes in stress reactivity at Level 2; and the interrelations between changes in stress reactivity and changes in personality traits at Level 3. Higher reactivity at baseline was associated with lower levels of extraversion and conscientiousness and higher levels of neuroticism at baseline. Further, increases in reactivity across the 18-year period were associated with declines in extraversion, agreeableness, and openness. Changes in reactivity were not related to changes in neuroticism or conscientiousness. These findings clarify how changes in daily experiences are related to broader personality changes and inform integrative frameworks of personality development across the adult lifespan. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":" ","pages":"146-160"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12354287/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144508909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychology and AgingPub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2025-08-07DOI: 10.1037/pag0000928
Zeynep N Saruhanlioglu, Yvonne Brehmer, Keri A Pekaar, Dorien Kooij, Jacqueline Mogle, David M Almeida, Patrick Klaiber
{"title":"Daily associations between stress occurrence and memory lapses across middle and late adulthood: The potential stress-buffering role of positive affect.","authors":"Zeynep N Saruhanlioglu, Yvonne Brehmer, Keri A Pekaar, Dorien Kooij, Jacqueline Mogle, David M Almeida, Patrick Klaiber","doi":"10.1037/pag0000928","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000928","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Advanced age has been associated with benefits in stress reactivity. However, previous research has not investigated this advantage for daily memory functioning, which is crucial for the quality of life in adulthood. Considering the possible detrimental effects of stressors on daily memory functioning, this study investigated the relationship between stressor occurrence and memory lapses in middle and late adulthood and whether positive affect acts as a stress buffer. The sample consisted of 1,071 community-dwelling adults aged 43-90 years (<i>M</i> = 62.71, <i>SD</i> = 10.13) from the National Study of Daily Experiences. Participants completed eight consecutive daily telephone interviews assessing stressor occurrence, memory lapses (retrospective and prospective), and positive affect. Mixed-effects logistic regression models were used to analyze the multilevel data (days nested within people). The findings showed that participants were more likely to report memory lapses on days with a stressor compared to days without a stressor. Positive affect did not buffer this relationship, regardless of the arousal level, although higher overall positive affect was associated with fewer memory lapses. Age did not moderate this relationship. Exploratory analyses suggested that the present effects were mostly driven by retrospective rather than prospective memory lapses. These findings highlight the impact of daily stressors on cognitive functioning and underscore the need to explore modifiable factors to protect against stress-related daily memory lapses throughout adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":" ","pages":"176-188"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144800655","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}
Tabea Meier, Zilla M Huber, Olenka Dworakowski, Claudia M Haase, Ryan L Boyd, Andrea B Horn
{"title":"Everyday conversations of younger and older couples: Age differences in we-ness, emotions, and conversation topics.","authors":"Tabea Meier, Zilla M Huber, Olenka Dworakowski, Claudia M Haase, Ryan L Boyd, Andrea B Horn","doi":"10.1037/pag0000971","DOIUrl":"10.1037/pag0000971","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Emotional aging theories suggest that individuals increasingly prioritize close relationships and positive emotions as they get older. Past studies often used single-subject designs to test these predictions. Dyadic studies are rare and even fewer have examined how romantic partners interact in everyday life. Social sensing offers novel opportunities to study couples' socioemotional processes \"in the wild\" through naturalistic conversations. In this 21-day experience-sampling study, 55 younger (18-33 years) and 43 older couples (57-87 years) recorded at least two conversations on a smartphone. We used natural language analysis to examine age differences in we-ness (i.e., communal orientation and based on we-pronouns), positive and negative emotions (emotion words and laughter), and central themes (using the meaning extraction method) in daily conversations. The results from multilevel modeling revealed that older (vs. younger) couples' conversations were characterized by greater we-ness and less positive emotions (i.e., fewer positive emotion words and less laughter). Exploratory follow-up analyses suggest that age differences in positive emotions may have been driven by arousal, as older couples' conversations scored lower in positive high-arousal words. Age differences in negative emotion word use were not statistically significant. Analyses further revealed seven common conversation themes (e.g., social relationships, daily routine, food, money, or sleep). Younger couples, for example, referred more to other people and older couples more to places or orientation. In line with emotional aging theories, these findings show that older adults exhibit greater interdependence and lower high-arousal positive emotions in their everyday interactions and open the door for the future research on real-life couple interactions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48426,"journal":{"name":"Psychology and Aging","volume":"41 2","pages":"241-255"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147291497","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}