Reader and text variables as determinants of discourse memory in adulthood

Young students, old students, and old nonstudents read and recalled short texts that were in either narrative or expository form. In addition, a set of six verbal ability measures thought to be related to discourse memory was obtained for all of the participants. Older subjects recalled less from the texts than younger subjects, and neither type of text nor student status modified the magnitude of the age differences. The set of verbal ability measures was adequately described by two principal components, one consisting of simple, speed-related skills, and the other consisting of more complex skills. Each set of variables predicted a proportion of discourse memory variance, and accounted for some of the variance that would otherwise be attributed to age. The results suggest that age differences in some basic cognitive skills related to reading effectiveness might underlie age differences in memory for discourse.     

Episodic memory change in late adulthood: Generalizability across samples and performance indices

Younger adults recall more information from episodic memory tasks than do older adults. Because longitudinal studies are rare and often incompatible, the extent of actual late-life memory change is not well established. We assemble two different longitudinal samples of normal older adults, each of which is tested twice at a 3-year interval, using a large battery of episodic memory indicators. Together, two-wave data from both the Victoria Longitudinal Study in Canada (n = 400) and the Kungsholmen Project in Sweden (n = 168) cover a 40-year span of adulthood, ranging from 54 to 94 years of age. Principal memory tasks include categorizable word lists, story recall, and random word lists, as well as indicators of cognitive support. Overall, an examination of performance on sets of common and complementary episodic tasks reveals that, for both samples, actual 3-year changes are modest and that, when decline occurs, it is gradual. The exception-greater decline for more supported tasks-suggests that these may be especially sensitive to late-life changes.     

The rise and fall of immediate and delayed memory for verbal and visuospatial information from late childhood to late adulthood

Over 100,000 verbal and visuospatial immediate and delayed memory tests were presented via the Internet to over 28,000 participants in the age range of 11 to 80. Structural equation modeling pointed to the verbal versus visuospatial dimension as an important factor in individual differences, but not the immediate versus delayed dimension. We found a linear decrease of 1% to 3% per year in overall memory performance past the age of 25. For visuospatial tests, this decrease started at age 18 and was twice as fast as the decrease of verbal memory. There were strong effects of education, with the highest educated group sometimes scoring one full standard deviation above the lowest educated group. Gender effects were small but as expected: women outperformed men on the verbal memory tasks; men outperformed women on the visuospatial tasks. We also found evidence of increasing proneness to false memory with age. Memory for recent news events did not show a decrease with age.     

Sex-role development in late adolescence and adulthood

The present study investigated associations between age and sex roles in a cross-sectional analysis of people varying in age from late adolescence to middle adulthood. People in the androgynous sex role were older than sex-typed men and women. Cross-sex characteristics tended to be greater among older people, while same-sex characteristics were uncorrelated with age. Sex-role development appears to continue into adulthood, a view more in keeping with a transcendent model than a traditional model of sex-role development.This study was assisted by computer funds from the College of Human Development, The Pennsylvania State University. The authors thank an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.     

Optimal recall in early and late adulthood

Mäntylä & Nilsson (1983) recently presented a striking empirical phenomenon demonstrating a practically perfect recall of verbal materials encountered at one single trial and without specific instructions to learn the items. The purpose of the study to be presented in this article was to investigate whether older adults are capable of performing at the same high level of recall as younger adults did in the Mäntylä & Nilsson study. Type of instructions and number of retrieval cues were included in the experimental design, in addition to the age factor. Although the results indicated a superior memory performance of younger adults as compared to older adults, the latter group of subjects demonstrated an extremely high level of recall as well. Both age groups showed quite similar recall patterns in the sense that no interaction effects between the age factor and the other independent variables were obtained. The data were discussed relative to qualitatively and quantitatively based explanations of age differences in memory.     

The evolution of paternal identity in late adulthood

The experience of fatherhood in late adulthood has received little attention in the psychoanalytic literature. After a presentation of the literature on fatherhood and a consideration of the developmental tasks of late adulthood in which the experience of fatherhood is embedded, the dynamically charged, developmentally conflicted nature of the relationships between late-life fathers and their children is explored. A basic premise is that the changing nature of these relationships inevitably confronts the elderly patriarch with considerable intra-psychic turmoil, reflection, and conflict that must be engaged and mastered if these most significant relationships are to be maintained and sustained for both generations. Clinical examples illustrate the theoretical points presented.     

Memory anxiety and memory performance in adulthood

The present study examined the contribution of general and domain-specific anxiety to the prediction of memory performance in a sample of 350 young, middle-aged and old adults. In a preliminary stage of this investigation, psychometric analyses revealed that the predictive validity of the Anxiety scale of the Metamemory in Adulthood questionnaire, used to assess memory-related anxiety, could be improved by using an abbreviated version of the scale. This Memory Anxiety subscale predicted level of state anxiety experienced by middle-aged and older subjects in anticipation of a memory-demanding task. It was superior to the general state measures in predicting actual memory performance, but only for the oldest age group. Results thus provide support for domain- and age-specificity in the assessment of anxiety performance relationships.     

Consumer information processing strategies in middle and late adulthood

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the extent to which performance of a complex cognitive task of a type resembling that encountered in everyday life is maintained through adulthood. A total of 80 subjects participated; 20 in their thirties, 20 in their fifties, 20 in their sixties, and 20 in their seventies. Subjects were asked to make preference judgments with respect to 32 pocket-size notebooks of a sort they might encounter as consumers in a stationery or variety store. Independently, they were also asked to express their preferences with respect to each of the four dimensions on which the notebooks varied. With only minor differences across age groups, most subjects demonstrated the ability to integrate their individual dimension preferences into a complex preference judgment of an object embodying those dimensions, in a logically consistent manner.     

Ability correlates of memory performance in adulthood and aging

The predictive relationships between an array of cognitive process and intellectual ability variables and text- and word-recall performance were examined. A sample of 584 men and women from 3 age groups (19-36, 55-69, and 70-86 years) completed a battery of 23 tasks marking 2 latent criterion variables and 10 latent predictor variables. The results indicated that (a) individual differences in process and ability variables predict performance on text and word recall, accounting for approximately half of the variance; (b) the pattern of predictors is quite similar for text and word recall; (c) age-related differences in text and word recall can be substantially accounted for by individual differences in constituent abilities, particularly indicators of verbal speed and working memory; and (d) there is some evidence to suggest that the pattern of ability-performance relationships varies across age, but such interactions appear to be relatively small.     

The dynamics of memory retrieval in older adulthood.

One of the most robust findings in cognitive aging is that of a significant decline in self-initiated recall from episodic memory. In laboratory studies this deficit can be seen in significant age differences in word-list free recall. In this article, we focus on free recall of categorized word lists where one observes "response bursting" in the form of a rapid output of within-category items with longer delays between categories. Age differences appear primarily in between-category latencies, results that are consistent with a relative sparing of semantic memory combined with an age-deficit in episodic retrieval. When adjusted for differences in overall mnemonic ability, we demonstrate that the relationship between organization and learning remains invariant with normal aging. We argue that the locus of the age deficit in free recall lies at the level of temporal coding of items and the use of temporal associations to guide recall.     

Geometric determinants of human spatial memory

Geometric alterations to the boundaries of a virtual environment were used to investigate the representations underlying human spatial memory. Subjects encountered a cue object in a simple rectangular enclosure, with distant landmarks for orientation. After a brief delay, during which they were removed from the arena, subjects were returned to it at a new location and orientation and asked to mark the place where the cue had been. On some trials the geometry (size, aspect ratio) of the arena was varied between presentation and testing. Responses tended to lie somewhere between a location that maintained fixed distances from nearby walls and a location that maintained fixed ratios of the distances between opposing walls. The former were more common after expansions and for cued locations nearer to the edge while the latter were more common after contractions and for locations nearer to the center. The spatial distributions of responses predicted by various simple geometric models were compared to the data. The best fitting model was one derived from the response properties of 'place cells' in the rat hippocampus, which matches the 'proximities' 1/(d+c) of the cue to the four walls of the arena, where d is the distance to a wall and c is a global constant. Subjects also tended to adopt the same orientation at presentation and testing, although this was not due to using a view matching strategy, which could be ruled out in 50% of responses. Disoriented responses were most often seen where the cued location was near the center of the arena or where the long axis of a rectangular arena was changed between presentation and testing, suggesting that the geometry of the arena acts as a weak cue to orientation. Overall, the results suggest a process of visual landmark matching to determine orientation, combined with an abstract representation of the proximity of the cued location to the walls of the arena consistent with the neural representation of location in the hippocampus.     

Spousal conflict resolution strategies and marital relations in late adulthood

In this study, we examined differences in the spousal conflict resolution strategies of husbands and wives in late adulthood among a sample of 76 married Israeli couples (N = 152). Using dyadic analysis (the actor–partner interdependence model), we examined the impacts of the strategies adopted by each spouse as well as their partner on evaluations of marital life as reflected in their assessments of positive and negative dimensions of marital life. The findings revealed that integration was the most prevalent strategy used by both spouses, whereas dominance and avoidance were the least prevalent strategies. Moreover, integration contributed most significantly to explaining assessments of marital life.     

Personality stability in late adulthood: a behavioral genetic analysis

A sample of 833 twins from the Minnesota Twin Study of Adult Development and Aging completed the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ; Tellegen, 1982) twice, averaging 59.4 (sd=9.7) years of age at first and 64.4 (sd=10.2) years of age at second testing (average retest interval 5.0 years, sd=2.36, range 1.0-10.4 years). Both means and standard deviations of scale scores were extremely stable from first to second testing. In addition, sample participants tended to retain their rank order on the scales (average r=.76 across scales). Bivariate biometric analyses showed that the genetic influences on most of the scale scores were almost perfectly correlated across the two waves (range .95 to 1.00). The nonshared environmental influences were also highly correlated across the two waves (range .53 to .73). Models specifying identical variance components at the two time points and fixing the genetic correlation to 1.00 provided improved fit. The results suggest that the high stability of personality in later adulthood has a strong genetic foundation, supplemented by stability of environmental effects.     

Goal orientation and self-efficacy in relation to memory in adulthood

The achievement goal framework (Dweck, 1986, American Psychologist, 41, 1040) has been well-established in children and college-students, but has rarely been examined empirically with older adults. The current study, including younger and older adults, examined the effects of memory self-efficacy, learning goals (focusing on skill mastery over time) and performance goals (focusing on performance outcome evaluations) on memory performance. Questionnaires measured memory self-efficacy and general orientation toward learning and performance goals; free and cued recall was assessed in a subsequent telephone interview. As expected, age was negatively related and education was positively related to memory self-efficacy, and memory self-efficacy was positively related to memory, in a structural equation model. Age was also negatively related to memory performance. Results supported the positive impact of learning goals and the negative impact of performance goals on memory self-efficacy. There was no significant direct effect of learning or performance goals on memory performance; their impact occurred via their effect on memory self-efficacy. The present study supports past research suggesting that learning goals are beneficial, and performance goals are maladaptive, for self-efficacy and learning, and validates the achievement goal framework in a sample including older adults.     

Learning strategies as determinants of memory deficiencies

Two tests were made of inferences about how learning strategies affect recall accuracy, and how peculiarities of strategy might account for mentally retardeds' memory deficiencies. Learning strategy was defined as the pattern of pauses generated by S as he paced himself through serial lists of letters. When given freedom to proceed as they wished, normally intelligent Ss paused increasingly the deeper they went into the list. Retarded Ss did not. It was concluded that the normals' active strategies contribute to their high primacy, while the retardeds' lack of distinctive pauses accounts for their low primacy. In the second test, the strategies were reversed. The normals were forced to abandon rehearsal; the retardeds were forced to rehearse. This resulted in greatly enhanced primacy for the retardeds, and greatly decreased primacy for the normals. In addition to showing how spontaneous strategies and forced strategies can directly influence recall accuracy, these findings suggest a reasonably simple means of mitigating short-term memory deficiencies.     

Age-related variation in the influences of aging stereotypes on memory in adulthood

Adults 24-86 years of age read positive or negative information about aging and memory prior to a memory test. The impact of this information on recall performance varied with age. Performance in the youngest and oldest participants was minimally affected by stereotype activation. Adults in their 60s exhibited weak effects consistent with the operation of stereotype threat, whereas middle-age adults exhibited a contrast effect in memory performance, suggestive of stereotype lift. Beliefs about aging and memory were also affected by stereotypic information, and older adults' changed beliefs were more important in predicting performance than was exposure to stereotype-based information alone.     

Latent growth curve analyses of accelerating decline in cognitive abilities in late adulthood

Latent growth models were applied to data from the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging to discover if the rate of change in cognitive performance increased from middle age to later adulthood. The sample included 590 participants aged 44 to 88 years at first measurement. Data were gathered at 2 follow-up occasions at intervals of 3 years. Cognitive ability was assessed through 11 tests that tapped crystallized, fluid, memory, and spatial abilities and perceptual speed. Results indicated stability for measures of crystallized ability, linear age changes for many cognitive abilities, and a significant acceleration in linear decline after age 65 for measures with a large speed component. Gender differences were found only in mean level, not in rate of decline.