How age affects memory task performance in clinically normal hearing persons

The main objective of this study is to investigate memory task performance in different age groups, irrespective of hearing status. Data are collected on a short-term memory task (WAIS-III Digit Span forward) and two working memory tasks (WAIS-III Digit Span backward and the Reading Span Test). The tasks are administered to young (20–30 years, n = 56), middle-aged (50–60 years, n = 47), and older participants (70–80 years, n = 16) with normal hearing thresholds. All participants have passed a cognitive screening task (Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA)). Young participants perform significantly better than middle-aged participants, while middle-aged and older participants perform similarly on the three memory tasks. Our data show that older clinically normal hearing persons perform equally well on the memory tasks as middle-aged persons. However, even under optimal conditions of preserved sensory processing, changes in memory performance occur. Based on our data, these changes set in before middle age.     

First‐hand sensory experience plays a limited role in children's early understanding of seeing and hearing as sources of knowledge: Evidence from typically hearing and deaf children

One early‐developing component of theory of mind is an understanding of the link between sensory perception and knowledge formation. We know little about the extent to which children's first‐hand sensory experiences drive the development of this understanding, as most tasks capturing this early understanding target vision, with less attention paid to the other senses. In this study, 64 typically hearing children (M_age = 4.0 years) and 21 orally educated deaf children (M_age = 5.44 years) were asked to identify which of two informants knew the identity of a toy animal when each had differing perceptual access to the animal. In the ‘seeing’ condition, one informant saw the animal and the other did not; in the ‘hearing’ condition, one informant heard the animal and the other did not. For both hearing and deaf children, there was no difference between performance on hearing and seeing trials, but deaf children were delayed in both conditions. Further, within both the hearing and deaf groups, older children outperformed younger children on these tasks, indicating that there is a developmental progression. Taken together, the pattern of results suggests that experiences other than first‐hand sensory experiences drive children's developing understanding that sensory perception is associated with knowledge.     

Are U.S. consumers using MyPlate and restaurant menu labels and does their use equate with dietary and exercise behavior?

The U.S. government provided a website, entitled MyPlate, and required menu labels to state calories to help the population make healthy dietary and exercise choices. The purpose of this study is to assess the awareness and use of nutrition information provided by MyPlate and by restaurant menu labels with dietary and exercise behavior for U.S. adults considering race/ethnicity and gender. This study uses data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2013–2014 for adults, aged 20 years and older, from 3 racial/ethnic groups N = 4924: 1,275 Hispanics, 1,177 non‐Hispanic Blacks (NHB); 2,472 non‐Hispanic Whites to assess awareness and who reported seeing nutrition information at fast‐food/pizza places and waitstaff restaurants and answered affirmatively to hearing about MyPlate (N = 749). Dietary behaviors for controlling or losing weight, reducing fat, and increasing exercise was significantly higher for those who tried MyPlate as compared with those who stated they did not try MyPlate. Over half the individuals who reported that they tried MyPlate stated that they would often use nutrition information for fast‐food/pizza places and waitstaff restaurants as compared with less than one‐third of individuals who declared that they have not tried MyPlate. Males, Hispanics, NHB, individuals with a lower education level, current smokers, and older adults had higher percent of not hearing about MyPlate. NHB, males, and older adults had a lower percent of using menu nutrition information. Increasing use of MyPlate and menu calorie labeling may serve to encourage vulnerable groups to make healthy dietary and exercise choices.     

A non-auditory measure of interference predicts distraction by competing speech in older adults

ABSTRACT

In this study, older adults monitored for pre-assigned target sounds in a target talker's speech in a quiet (no noise) condition and in a condition with competing-talker noise. The question was to which extent the impact of the competing-talker noise on performance could be predicted from individual hearing loss and from a cognitive measure of inhibitory abilities, i.e., a measure of Stroop interference. The results showed that the non-auditory measure of Stroop interference predicted the impact of distraction on performance, over and above the effect of hearing loss. This suggests that individual differences in inhibitory abilities among older adults relate to susceptibility to distracting speech.     

Ocular Movements in Reversibility of Perspective

To explore the role of acoustic factors in visual detection, this study employed 40 deaf and hearing Ss. Ss were requested to cancel all the letters “e” in a passage from Treasure Island. Results were analyzed in terms of probabilities of missing a pronounced or silent e and the e in the word “the.” Hearing and hard of hearing Ss were more likely to miss silent e's than pronounced e's. There was no significant difference between silent and pronounced e's for the profoundly deaf. Deaf and hearing Ss missed significantly more e's in “the” than pronounced or silent e's. The deaf, when compared to the hearing Ss, were more efficient in detecting pronounced and silent e's. They did not differ significantly from the hearing Ss in detecting the e in “the.”     

This time it’s personal: the memory benefit of hearing oneself

The production effect is the memory advantage of saying words aloud over simply reading them silently. It has been hypothesised that this advantage stems from production featuring distinctive information that stands out at study relative to reading silently. MacLeod (2011) (I said, you said: The production effect gets personal. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 1197–1202. doi:10.3758/s13423-011-0168-8) found superior memory for reading aloud oneself vs. hearing another person read aloud, which suggests that motor information (speaking), self-referential information (i.e., “I said it”), or both contribute to the production effect. In the present experiment, we dissociated the influence on memory of these two components by including a study condition in which participants heard themselves read words aloud (recorded earlier) – a first for production effect research – along with the more typical study conditions of reading aloud, hearing someone else speak, and reading silently. There was a gradient of memory across these four conditions, with hearing oneself lying between speaking and hearing someone else speak. These results imply that oral production is beneficial because it entails two distinctive components: a motor (speech) act and a unique, self-referential auditory input.     

General and contextualized emotion goals and its link with well-being across late,middle, and young adulthood

Prior research with young adults has shown how emotion goals (i.e., cognitive representations of preferred emotional states) can be instrumental (positive or negative) depending on the context and how this context sensitivity is linked to higher well-being. However, this research has overlooked older adults. We argue it is important looking at this age group as there is mixed evidence given that on one hand they have been described as exhibiting a positivity bias (hedonic orientation; preference for positive emotion goals), and on the other hand, being capable of suppressing this when it is adaptive to do so. Importantly, this bias towards positive emotion goals has been linked to better emotion regulation and higher well-being in older adults. In order to understand whether older adults can also exhibit instrumental emotion goals and whether this is linked to well-being, we conducted an exploratory study with older (N = 43, M_age = 68.33), middle (N = 47, M_age = 43.83), and young adults (N = 47; M_age = 21.98) who reported about their general and contextual emotion goals (in collaboration and confrontation), their well-being, and their current positive and negative affect. Although older adults reported lower negative affect than young adults, there were no age differences for general and contextualized emotion goals. Across the three age groups, a higher preference for happiness in general and in collaboration was linked to higher well-being. The obtained results highlight the need to study emotion goals longitudinally to better understand their possible changes throughout the lifespan and their influence on well-being.     

Using a multi‐feature paradigm to measure mismatch responses to minimal sound contrasts in children with cochlear implants and hearing aids

Our aim was to explore whether a multi‐feature paradigm (Optimum‐1) for eliciting mismatch negativity (MMN) would objectively capture difficulties in perceiving small sound contrasts in children with hearing impairment (HI) listening through their hearing aids (HAs) and/or cochlear implants (CIs). Children aged 5–7 years with HAs, CIs and children with normal hearing (NH) were tested in a free‐field setting using a multi‐feature paradigm with deviations in pitch, intensity, gap, duration, and location. There were significant mismatch responses across all subjects that were positive (p‐MMR) for the gap and pitch deviants (F(1,43) = 5.17, p = 0.028 and F(1,43) = 6.56, p = 0.014, respectively) and negative (MMN) for the duration deviant (F(1,43) = 4.74, p = 0.035). Only the intensity deviant showed a significant group interaction with MMN in the HA group and p‐MMR in the CI group (F(2,43) = 3.40, p = 0.043). The p‐MMR correlated negatively with age, with the strongest correlation in the NH subjects. In the CI group, the late discriminative negativity (LDN) was replaced by a late positivity with a significant group interaction for the location deviant. Children with severe HI can be assessed through their hearing device with a fast multi‐feature paradigm. For further studies a multi‐feature paradigm including more complex speech sounds may better capture variation in auditory processing in these children.     

Attributions for physical activity in very old adults: predicting everyday physical activity and mortality risk

Objectives: Although physical activity is recognised as a health-promoting behaviour for older adults, notable barriers exist that may reduce physical activity in this age group. Limited research has explored causal beliefs (attributions) as a barrier to physical activity. Our study assessed associations between older adults’ attributions about physical activity and objective health outcomes. Methods: We examined the role of attributions as a predictor of everyday physical activity (EPA) and subsequent mortality risk over a 10-year period (2006–2016) in a sample of older adults (M_age?=?87, N?=?261). Results: OLS and Cox proportional hazard regression analyses revealed older adults who endorsed more internal and uncontrollable attributions for limited activity (physical incapacity) when feeling unwell had lower subsequent EPA (β?=??0.18), and higher 10-year mortality risk (HR?=?1.46). Other attributions with different dimensional properties (e.g. internal and controllable) were not associated with EPA or mortality. Discussion: Findings suggest that causal beliefs older adults have about their physical activity can influence their future behaviour and longevity. Psychological treatments designed to discourage maladaptive attributional thinking for older populations who face barriers to physical activity may be an important avenue for future research.     

Anger communication in deaf children

In this study, we investigated how deaf children express their anger towards peers and with what intentions. Eleven-year-old deaf children (n=21) and a hearing control group (n=36) were offered four vignettes describing anger-evoking conflict situations with peers. Children were asked how they would respond, how the responsible peer would react, and what would happen to their relationship. Deaf children employed the communicative function of anger expression differently from hearing children. Whereas hearing children used anger expression to reflect on the anguish that another child caused them, deaf children used it rather bluntly and explained less. Moreover, deaf children expected less empathic responses from the peer causing them harm. Both groups did, however, expect equally often that the relationship with the peer would stay intact. These findings are discussed in the light of deaf children's impaired emotion socialization secondary to their limited communication skills.     

Memory for faces with emotional expressions in Alzheimer’s disease and healthy older participants: positivity effect is not only due to familiarity

Young individuals better memorize initially seen faces with emotional rather than neutral expressions. Healthy older participants and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients show better memory for faces with positive expressions. The socioemotional selectivity theory postulates that this positivity effect in memory reflects a general age-related preference for positive stimuli, subserving emotion regulation. Another explanation might be that older participants use compensatory strategies, often considering happy faces as previously seen. The question about the existence of this effect in tasks not permitting such compensatory strategies is still open. Thus, we compared the performance of healthy participants and AD patients for positive, neutral, and negative faces in such tasks. Healthy older participants and AD patients showed a positivity effect in memory, but there was no difference between emotional and neutral faces in young participants. Our results suggest that the positivity effect in memory is not entirely due to the sense of familiarity for smiling faces.     

Memory for Faces and Objects by Deaf and Hearing Signers and Hearing Nonsigners

The memory of 11 deaf and 11 hearing British Sign Language users and 11 hearing nonsigners for pictures of faces of and verbalizable objects was measured using the game Concentration. The three groups performed at the same level for the objects. In contrast the deaf signers were better for faces than the hearing signers, who in turn were superior to the hearing nonsigners, who were the worst. Three hypotheses were made: That there would be no significant difference in terms of the number of attempts between the three groups on the verbalizable object task, that the hearing and deaf signers would demonstrate superior performance to that of the hearing nonsigners on the matching faces task, and that the hearing and deaf signers would exhibit similar performance levels on the matching faces task. The first two hypotheses were supported, but the third was not. Deaf signers were found to be superior for memory for faces to hearing signers and hearing nonsigners. Possible explanations for the findings are discussed, including the possibility that deafness and the long use of sign language have additive effects.     

Destination memory and cognitive theory of mind in normal ageing

Destination memory is the ability to remember the destination to which a piece of information has been addressed (e.g., “Did I tell you about the promotion?”). This ability is found to be impaired in normal ageing. Our work aimed to link this deterioration to the decline in theory of mind. Forty younger adults (M age = 23.13 years, SD = 4.00) and 36 older adults (M age = 69.53 years, SD = 8.93) performed a destination memory task. They also performed the False-belief test addressing cognitive theory of mind and the Reading the mind in the eyes test addressing affective theory of mind. Results showed significant deterioration in destination memory, cognitive theory of mind and affective theory of mind in the older adults. The older adults’ performance on destination memory was significantly correlated with and predicted by their performance on cognitive theory of mind. Difficulties in the ability to interpret and predict others’ mental states are related to destination memory decline in older adults.     

Age and emotion affect how we look at a face: Visual scan patterns differ for own-age versus other-age emotional faces

We investigated how age of faces and emotion expressed in faces affect young (n=30) and older (n=20) adults’ visual inspection while viewing faces and judging their expressions. Overall, expression identification was better for young than older faces, suggesting that interpreting expressions in young faces is easier than in older faces, even for older participants. Moreover, there were age-group differences in misattributions of expressions, in that young participants were more likely to label disgusted faces as angry, whereas older adults were more likely to label angry faces as disgusted. In addition to effects of emotion expressed in faces, age of faces affected visual inspection of faces: Both young and older participants spent more time looking at own-age than other-age faces, with longer looking at own-age faces predicting better own-age expression identification. Thus, cues used in expression identification may shift as a function of emotion and age of faces, in interaction with age of participants.     

Semantic priming,not repetition priming,is to blame for false hearing

Contextual and sensory information are combined in speech perception. Conflict between the two can lead to false hearing, defined as a high-confidence misidentification of a spoken word. Rogers, Jacoby, and Sommers (Psychology and Aging, 27(1), 33–45, 2012) found that older adults are more susceptible to false hearing than are young adults, using a combination of semantic priming and repetition priming to create context. In this study, the type of context (repetition vs. sematic priming) responsible for false hearing was examined. Older and young adult participants read and listened to a list of paired associates (e.g., ROW–BOAT) and were told to remember the pairs for a later memory test. Following the memory test, participants identified words masked in noise that were preceded by a cue word in the clear. Targets were semantically associated to the cue (e.g., ROW–BOAT), unrelated to the cue (e.g., JAW–PASS), or phonologically related to a semantic associate of the cue (e.g., ROW–GOAT). How often each cue word and its paired associate were presented prior to the memory test was manipulated (0, 3, or 5 times) to test effects of repetition priming. Results showed repetitions had no effect on rates of context-based listening or false hearing. However, repetition did significantly increase sensory information as a basis for metacognitive judgments in young and older adults. This pattern suggests that semantic priming dominates as the basis for false hearing and highlights context and sensory information operating as qualitatively different bases for listening and metacognition.     

Appraisal of Memory Functioning and Memory Performance in Healthy Ageing and Early-Stage Alzheimer's Disease

ABSTRACT

Background/Aims: To compare memory evaluations in healthy older people and people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and present standardised individual and dyadic methods for classifying degree of memory awareness in the participants with dementia. Methods: Cross-sectional study evaluating awareness of memory functioning and performance and providing normative data for healthy individuals and couples, together with comparison data from people with AD. Results: As a group, older people are reasonably accurate raters of their own memory functioning and performance, although considerable individual differences can be observed, and control dyads show good comparative accuracy. Comparing normative data from the control group to data from participants with AD confirms that significant overestimation is a frequent feature among people with dementia, with approximately two-thirds showing this pattern, although significant under-estimation is also reliably observed in a small proportion of people with dementia. Different types of measure elicit different profiles of memory awareness in participants with dementia. Conclusion: Normative data from older individuals and couples provides useful percentile-based indices for determining level of memory awareness in people with dementia.     

A Spiritual Screening Tool for Older Adults

Objective The purpose of this non-experimental study was to investigate the reliability and validity of a self-administered screening tool for spiritual distress in older adults. The tool was unique in that items were consistent with a conceptual definition of spirituality presented in the professional literature and supported by theories of behavioral development for older adults. Methods Questionnaires were distributed to residents of a continuing care retirement community participating in a class on spirituality. Results The split-half reliability coefficient was found to be 0.776. Construct validity was established and a cutoff value for spiritual distress was determined. Discussion Tests for reliability and validity demonstrated confidence in use of the tool to screen for spiritual distress in older adults.     

Older adult research in the Journal of Counseling Psychology,The Counseling Psychologist,and Counselling Psychology Quarterly: A 15-year review and implications for research

In preparing for an aging global population, older adults’ well-being has become an urgent priority across the world. Counseling psychologists have also called upon the field for more empirical attention on older adults. Yet, a review of the literature revealed that older adults were represented in less than 2% of all the articles in the Journal of Counseling Psychology (JCP) and The Counseling Psychologist (TCP) from 1991 to 2000. The current study presents a follow-up review of older adult research in counseling psychology literature between 2001 and 2015 in the following mainstream journals: Counselling Psychology Quarterly (CPQ), JCP, and TCQ. Results suggest a decline in the past 15 years, with less than 1% of the total articles in JCP, TCP, and CPQ devoted to older adults. Most of the studies employed cross-sectional survey research design to examine predictors of mental health. A number of studies focused on culture-specific experiences of diverse older adults. Implications and suggestions for future research on older adult issues are discussed in relation to the principles and interests rooted in the field of counseling psychology.     

What do targeting positive views on ageing add to a physical activity intervention in older adults? Results from a randomised controlled trial

Objective: Physical activity is a key factor for healthy ageing, yet many older people lead a sedentary lifestyle. Traditional physical activity interventions do not consider the specific needs and views of older adults. As views on ageing are known to be related to health behaviours, the current study evaluates the effectiveness of prompting positive views on ageing within a physical activity intervention.

Design: Randomised controlled trial with three groups aged 65+: Intervention for physical activity with ‘views-on-ageing’-component (n?=?101; IGVoA), and without ‘views-on-ageing’-component (n?=?30; IG), and active control intervention for volunteering (n?=?103; CG).

Main outcome measures: Attitudes towards older adults and physical activity were assessed five weeks before intervention, two weeks, six weeks and 8.5?months after the intervention.

Results: Compared to the IG and CG, positive attitudes towards older adults increased in the IGVoA after the intervention. For IGVoA, the indirect intervention effect on change in activity via change in attitudes towards older adults was reliable.

Conclusion: A ‘views-on-ageing’-component within a physical activity intervention affects change in physical activity via change in views on ageing. Views on ageing are a promising intervention technique to be incorporated into future physical activity interventions for older adults.