Correlated and coupled cognitive change in older adults with and without preclinical dementia

Common factor aging theories state that correlations among cognitive age effects signify a single underlying causal process. The logic underlying this proposition was evaluated by examining correlated cognitive change in a sample of 391 initially nondemented older adults who were tested annually for up to 16 years. Between-person correlations among rates of change (range = .56-.61) were partly attributable to model misspecification and the aggregation of heterogeneous groups of individuals. Correlated within-person cognitive change was much stronger in the cases (.45-.51) than in the noncases (.07-.18). These results demonstrate that correlated change may either signify causal commonality or the cumulative effects of multiple age-related conditions that can affect multiple cognitive systems.     

Correlates of memory decline: a 4-year longitudinal study of older adults with memory complaints.

Change in memory performance and its correspondence to change in speed of performance and self-reported memory functioning were investigated longitudinally in 30 older adults with memory complaints. Subjects were assessed by self-report questionnaires and cognitive tests 3 times, at near 2-year intervals. A significant decline in word-recall scores was found, which was accompanied at the group level by significant self-reported decline in everyday memory functioning and nonsignificant decline in Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale Digit Symbol scores (alpha = .05). The oldest subjects showed the most substantial declines in memory performance. At the individual level, however, memory change did not significantly correlate with either change in self-reports or change in Digit Symbol scores. Although these results do not support a cognitive slowing model of decline at the intraindividual level, they do have implications for intervention of age-related memory decline.     

Judgments of blame and forgiveness: A comparison of young adults,older adults,and older adults with dementia

IntroductionAlzheimer's disease may modify moral judgment.ObjectiveIn two studies, we assessed the impact of dementia on blame and forgiveness. Study 1 compared the ways in which young adults, older adults, and older adults with dementia cognitively integrated two factors. Study 2 assessed the number of different factors that older adults with dementia were able to integrate during these moral judgments.MethodThe participants recorded their moral judgements in a blame task and in a forgiveness task. In study 1, the two questionnaires contained scenarios built from the combination of two factors. In study 2, the participants were confronted with the same tasks under three different conditions with scenarios that combined three, four or five factors.ResultsThe data from study 1 showed that the older adults with dementia did not combine the two factors in the same way as young adults did: the combination depended on the type of moral judgment. Study 2 revealed differences in moral judgment between older adults with dementia and adults without dementia in all tasks (i.e. with three, four or five factors combined).ConclusionDementia has an impact on moral judgments. Moral judgment among people with dementia is both task- and condition-dependant.     

Priming effects of age stereotypes on memory of older adults in Korea

This study examined priming effects of age stereotypes on memory of Korean older adults. Age stereotypes refer to general beliefs about older adults. Through a priming task, older participants were briefly exposed to positive or negative age stereotypes without awareness. Before and after the priming task, free‐recall tasks were given to participants to measure their memory performance. Changes in performance caused by the priming task were estimated as priming effects of age stereotypes. Participants showed better memory performance after they were exposed to positive stereotypes during the priming task (positive priming effects). In contrast, participants showed worse memory performance after they were exposed to negative age stereotypes during the priming task (negative priming effects). The magnitude of priming effects was similar in positive and negative stereotypes. This result suggests that the implicit activation of age stereotypes can change memory of Korean elderly in both positive and negative ways.     

Prospective memory in young and older adults: The effects of task importance and ongoing task load

Remembering to perform an action in the future, called prospective memory, often shows age-related differences in favor of young adults when tested in the laboratory. Recently Smith, Horn, and Bayen (2012; Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 19, 495) embedded a PM task in an ongoing color-matching task and manipulated the difficulty of the ongoing task by varying the number of colors on each trial of the task. Smith et al. found that age-related differences in PM performance (lower PM performance for older adults relative to young adults) persisted even when older adults could perform the ongoing task as well or better than the young adults. The current study investigates a possible explanation for the pattern of results reported by Smith et al. by including a manipulation of task emphasis: for half of the participants the prospective memory task was emphasize, while for the other half the ongoing color-matching task was emphasized. Older adults performed a 4-color version of the ongoing color-matching task, while young adults completed either the 4-color or a more difficult 6-color version of the ongoing task. Older adults failed to perform as well as the young adults on the prospective memory task regardless of task emphasis, even when older adults were performing as well or better than the young adults on the ongoing color-matching task. The current results indicate that the lack of an effect of ongoing task load on prospective memory task performance is not due to a perception that one or the other task is more important than the other.     

The roles of chronological age and time perspective in memory positivity

The observation that older adults show enhanced cognition for emotionally positive information has been labeled the positivity effect (Reed, Chan, & Mikels, 2014). According to the Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST, Carstensen, 1991), a prominent lifespan development theory, cognition is strongly influenced by motivational goals, and these goals are impacted by subjective time perspective. Although the positivity effect is most commonly observed in older adults, as age usually co-varies with time perspective, the SST posits that time perspective, not age, is the key explanatory factor of positivity. We examined the effects of these predictors on positivity in an episodic memory task in younger and older adults and found that age, not time perspective, was a key predictor of memory positivity. Our results add to the growing literature that challenge the notion that time perspective is the driving force behind age-related differences in emotional processing and functioning.     

Discounting input from older adults: the role of age salience on partner age effects in the social contagion of memory

Three experiments examined the impact of partner age on the magnitude of socially suggested false memories. Young participants recalled household scenes in collaboration with an implied young or older adult partner who intentionally recalled false items. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with only the age of their partner (low age-salience context); in Experiment 2, participants were presented with the age of their partner along with a photograph and biographical information about their partner (high age-salience context); in Experiment 3, age salience was varied within the same experiment. Across experiments, participants in both the low age-salience and high age-salience contexts incorporated their partners’ misleading suggestions into their own subsequent recall and recognition reports, thus demonstrating social contagion with implied partners. Importantly, the effect of partner age differed across conditions. Participants in the high age-salience context were less likely to incorporate misleading suggestions from older adult partners than from young adult partners, but participants in the low age-salience context were equally likely to incorporate suggestions from young and older adult partners. Participants discount the memory of older adult partners only when age is highly salient.     

Personal importance, motivation, and performance of older adults.

This investigation was conducted to examine whether older adults would improve their performance when given statements intended to make them feel important to a research study as well as statements concerning their over-all well-being. Women (n = 14) and men (n = 15) with mean ages of 76.0 yr. and 75.1 yr., respectively, were randomly assigned into a control group, a positive reinforcement group, and a group given statements of personal importance. Dependent measures on a rotary pursuit task, screw-and-nut assembly task, and an interest questionnaire were obtained during three separate visits. Data were analyzed with a 3 x 3 (Groups x Days) analysis of variance. While no significant group effects were found on any measure, a significant main effect was obtained for days, indicative of learning.     

A coordinated analysis of the associations among personality traits,cognitive decline,and dementia in older adulthood

There are individual differences in the rates of cognitive decline across later adulthood. Personality traits are among the factors that may account for these differences. The current project investigated whether personality traits were associated with trajectories of cognitive decline, and whether the associations were different before and after dementia diagnosis. The data was analyzed using linear mixed effects regression. Across study aims is a focus on replicability and generalizability. Each question was addressed in four independent longitudinal studies (EAS, MAP, ROS, SATSA), then meta-analyzed, providing estimates of replicability. Results indicated that low neuroticism and high openness were associated with total cognitive function. We detected evidence for cognitive decline in all four samples, and openness was associated with decline post dementia diagnosis.     

Working memory training and transfer in older adults

There has been a great deal of interest, both privately and commercially, in using working memory training exercises to improve general cognitive function. However, many of the laboratory findings for older adults, a group in which this training is of utmost interest, are discouraging due to the lack of transfer to other tasks and skills. Importantly, improvements in everyday functioning remain largely unexamined in relation to WM training. We trained working memory in older adults using a task that encourages transfer in young adults (Chein & Morrison, 2010). We tested transfer to measures of working memory (e.g., Reading Span), everyday cognitive functioning [the Test of Everyday Attention (TEA) and the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT)], and other tasks of interest. Relative to controls, trained participants showed transfer improvements in Reading Span and the number of repetitions on the CVLT. Training group participants were also significantly more likely to self-report improvements in everyday attention. Our findings support the use of ecological tasks as a measure of transfer in an older adult population.     

Self-initiated object-location memory in young and older adults

The present study explored self-initiated object-location memory in ecological contexts, as aspect of memory that is largely absent from the research literature. Young and older adults memorized objects-location associations they selected themselves or object-location associations provided to them, and elaborated on the strategy they used when selecting the locations themselves. Retrieval took place 30 min and 1 month after encoding. The results showed an age-related decline in self-initiated and provided object-location memory. Older adults benefited from self-initiation more than young adults when tested after 30 min, while the benefit was equal when tested after 1 month. Furthermore, elaboration enhanced memory only in older adults, and only after 30 min. Both age groups used deep encoding strategies on the majority of the trials, but their percentage was lower in older adults. Overall, the study demonstrated the processes involved in self-initiated object-location memory, which is an essential part of everyday functioning.     

Prospective memory in young and older adults: the effects of ongoing-task load

Prospective memory involves remembering to perform intended actions in the future. Previous work with the multinomial model of event-based prospective memory indicated that adult age-related differences in prospective-memory performance were due to the prospective (not the retrospective) component of the task (Smith & Bayen, 2006 , Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32, 623). However, ongoing-task performance was also lower in older adults in that study. In the current study with young and older adults, the difficulty of the ongoing task was manipulated by varying the number of colors per trial to create easier and harder versions of the ongoing task for each age group. The easier version included 2 colors per trial for older adults and 4 colors for young adults. The harder version included 4 colors for older adults and 6 colors for young adults. By adjusting the ongoing-task difficulty, older adults were able to perform the ongoing task as well or better than the young adults. Analyses with the multinomial model revealed that making the ongoing task easier for older adults (or more difficult for young adults) did not eliminate age-related differences in prospective-memory performance and the underlying prospective component.     

Goals-feedback conditions and episodic memory: Mechanisms for memory gains in older and younger adults

Research has established that challenging memory goals always lead to score increases for younger adults, and can increase older adults' scores under supportive conditions. This study examined beliefs and on-task effort as potential mechanisms for these self-regulatory gains, in particular to learn whether episodic memory gains across multiple trials of shopping list recall are controlled by the same factors for young and old people. Goals with feedback led to higher recall and strategic categorisation than a control condition. Strategy usage was the strongest predictor of gains over trials for both age groups. Age, goal condition, and effort also predicted scores across the entire sample. Older adults' gains, but not younger adults' gains, were affected significantly by the interaction of self-efficacy beliefs and goal condition, and condition interacted with locus of control to predict younger adult gains. These results emphasise the importance of self-regulatory effort and positive beliefs for facilitating goal-related memory gains.     

Implicit and explicit memory in young and older adults

In three experiments, young and older adults were compared on both implicit and explicit memory tasks. The size of repetition priming effects in word completion and in perceptual identification tasks did not differ reliably across ages. However, age-related decrements in performance were obtained in free recall, cued recall, and recognition. These results, similar to those observed in amnesics, suggest that older adults are impaired on tasks which require conscious recollection but that memory which depends on automatic activation processes in relatively unaffected by age.     

Feature memory and binding in young and older adults

Intact memory for complex events requires not only memory for particular features (e.g., item, location, color, size), but also intact cognitive processes for binding the features together. Binding provides the memorial experience that certain features belong together. The experiments presented here were designed to explicate these as potentially separable sources of age-associated changes in complex memory—namely, to investigate the possibility that age-related changes in memory for complex events arise from deficits in (1) memory for the kinds of information that comprise complex memories, (2) the processes necessary for binding this information into complex memories, or (3) both of these components. Young and older adults were presented with colored items located within an array. Relative to young adults, older adults had a specific and disproportionate deficit in recognition memory for location, but not for item or for color. Also, older adults consistently demonstrated poorer recognition memory for bound information, especially when all features were acquired intentionally. These feature and binding deficits separately contribute to what have been described as older adults’ context and source memory impairments.     

Interactions between stereotype threat,subjective aging,and memory in older adults

This study examined whether the effects of stereotype threat on memory and subjective age were moderated by positive age stereotypes and self-perceptions of aging among older adults. Perceived threat as a mechanism underlying these effects was also explored. Results showed that stereotype threat (high vs. low threat) did not affect the dependent variables. Moreover, self-perceptions of aging did not moderate the effect of stereotype threat on the dependent variables. However, for people with more positive age stereotypes, older people under highthreat perceived more threat than people under low threat. This could be explained by an effect of age stereotypes in the high-threat group: the more positive age stereotypes held by participants, the more they perceived threat, which in turn decreased their memory performance and made them feel mentally older. We hypothesized that age group identity is stronger in people with more positive age stereotypes, which increase perceived threat.