Granny, (don't) get your gun: competency issues in gun ownership by older adults

This article explores the possible risks associated with gun ownership by older adults. We summarize existing regulations on who may own firearms, especially with respect to age. We then present data on older gun owners and violence committed by older adults in general, followed by a discussion of gun violence perpetrated by gun owners whose functional and cognitive abilities have declined, perhaps as a result of dementia. For comparison purposes, we review regulations on driving among older adults, drawing parallels to gun ownership. The paper concludes with recommendations for ensuring the safety of older gun owners and others, balanced against citizens' right to bear arms, and with some directions for research.     

Personal goals of older adults: issues in assessment and prediction.

This study identifies dimensions of individual difference in the content of older adults' personal goals and examines demographic, loss-related, and contextual influences on these goals. Results are based on the responses of 179 elders to a 112-item inventory designed to tap achievement, maintenance, disengagement, and coping goals in 16 life domains. Factor analyses yielded 10 dimensions that describe themes of global motivation, concerns about support and desired pace, and complexity of life. Demographic disadvantages and age-related transitions were related to greater desire for disengagement, support, and stability. Elders who were married and healthy were more likely to report a desire for an energetic life-style. Results are discussed in terms of implications for future research on elders' goals as a context for understanding the meaning of self-evaluation and environmental influences on aging.     

Behavior-analytic research on dementia in older adults

It is estimated that 1 in 10 adults aged 65 years and older have been diagnosed with dementia, which is associated with numerous behavioral excesses and deficits. Despite the publication of a special section of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA) on behavioral gerontology (Iwata, 1986), there continues to be a paucity of behavior-analytic research with this population. This review compares the research published before and after the behavioral gerontology special section and evaluates the most recently published aging articles in JABA.     

In the eye of the beholder: views of psychological well-being among middle-aged and older adults

Although the topic of psychological well-being has generated considerable research, few studies have investigated how adults themselves define positive functioning. To probe their conceptions of well-being, interviews were conducted with a community sample of 171 middle-aged (M = 52.5 years, SD = 8.7) and older (M = 73.5 years, SD = 6.1) men and women. Questions pertained to general life evaluations, past life experiences, conceptions of well-being, and views of the aging process. Responses indicated that both age groups and sexes emphasized an "others orientation" (being a caring, compassionate person, and having good relationships) in defining well-being. Middle-aged respondents stressed self-confidence, self-acceptance, and self-knowledge, whereas older persons cited accepting change as an important quality of positive functioning. In addition to attention to positive relations with others as an index of well-being, lay views pointed to a sense of humor, enjoying life, and accepting change as criteria of successful aging.     

Relational integration in older adults

Reasoning requires making inferences based on information gleaned from a set of relations. The relational complexity of a problem increases with the number of relations that must be considered simultaneously to make a correct inference. Previous work (Viskontas, Morrison, Holyoak, Hummel, & Knowlton, ) has shown that older adults have difficulty integrating multiple relations during analogical reasoning, especially when required to inhibit irrelevant information. We report two experiments that examined the ability to integrate multiple relations in younger, middle-aged, and older adults performing two other reasoning tasks. These tasks systematically varied relational complexity, and required either inductive reasoning (a version of the Raven's Matrices Task) or transitive inference. Our results show that as people age they have increasing difficulty in solving problems that require them to integrate multiple relations. This difficulty may stem from a decrease in working memory capacity.     

Visuomotor binding in older adults

Action integration is the process through which actions performed on a stimulus and perceptual aspects of the stimulus become bound as a unitary object. This process appears to be controlled by the dopaminergic system in the prefrontal cortex, an area that is known to decrease in volume and dopamine functioning in older adults. Although the decline should lead to reduced action integration in older adults, we found equivalent integration in both young and older adults. This indicates that older adults may be able to compensate for their dopaminergic deficiencies by activating additional neural networks that are not used by young adults.     

Representational momentum in older adults

Humans have a tendency to perceive motion even in static images that simply “imply” movement. This tendency is so strong that our memory for actions depicted in static images is distorted in the direction of implied motion - a phenomenon known as representational momentum (RM). In the present study, we created an RM display depicting a pattern of implied (clockwise) rotation of a rectangle. Young adults viewers’ memory of the final position of the test rectangle was biased in the direction of continuing rotation, but older adults did not show a similar memory bias. We discuss several possible explanations for this group difference, but argue that the failure of older adults to shown an RM effect most likely reflects age-related changes in areas of the brain involved in processing real and implied motion.     

老年人群的韵律感知

老龄化导致听觉系统、认知功能有所衰退。老年人群的言语理解能力减弱, 韵律信息解析存在困难。老年人对重音、语调、语速等语言韵律感知能力退化, 对情感韵律的加工也出现问题, 特别是消极情绪韵律加工减退较快。老年疾病进一步加深韵律加工难度, 韵律感知呈现出与特定疾病的相关性。未来研究需考察不同语言背景老年人群的韵律感知表现与机制、复杂交流环境的影响、韵律感知障碍对老年疾病的预测、韵律感知的早期干预与复健等问题。     

Both young and older adults discount suggestions from older adults on a social memory test

In the present study, we examined the impacts of participant age and confederate age on social memory processes. During a collaborative recall phase, young and older adult participants were exposed to the erroneous memory reports of a young or an older adult confederate. On a subsequent individual recall test, young and older adult participants were equally likely to incorporate the confederates’ erroneous suggestions into their memory reports, suggesting that participant age had a minimal effect on social memory processes. However, confederate age did have a marked effect: Young adult participants were less likely to incorporate misleading suggestions from older adult confederates and less likely to report “remembering” items suggested by older adult confederates. Critically, older adult participants were also less likely to incorporate misleading information from fellow older adult confederates. Both young and older adult participants discounted older adult confederates’ contributions to a memory test.     

Training attentional control in older adults

Recent research has demonstrated benefits for older adults from training attentional control using a variable priority strategy, but the construct validity of the training task and the degree to which benefits of training transfer to other contexts are unclear. The goal of this study was to characterize baseline performance on the training task in a sample of 105 healthy older adults and to test for transfer of training in a subset (n?=?21). Training gains after 5 days and extent of transfer was compared to another subset (n?=?20) that served as a control group. Baseline performance on the training task was characterized by a two-factor model of working memory and processing speed. Processing speed correlated with the training task. Training gains in speed and accuracy were reliable and robust (ps <.001, η(2)?=?.57 to .90). Transfer to an analogous task was observed (ps <.05, η(2)?=?.10 to .17). The beneficial effect of training did not translate to improved performance on related measures of processing speed. This study highlights the robust effect of training and transfer to a similar context using a variable priority training task. Although processing speed is an important aspect of the training task, training benefit is either related to an untested aspect of the training task or transfer of training is limited to the training context.     

Predicting foreign-accent adaptation in older adults

We investigated comprehension of and adaptation to speech in an unfamiliar accent in older adults. Participants performed a speeded sentence verification task for accented sentences: one group upon auditory-only presentation, and the other group upon audiovisual presentation. Our questions were whether audiovisual presentation would facilitate adaptation to the novel accent, and which cognitive and linguistic measures would predict adaptation. Participants were therefore tested on a range of background tests: hearing acuity, auditory verbal short-term memory, working memory, attention-switching control, selective attention, and vocabulary knowledge. Both auditory-only and audiovisual groups showed improved accuracy and decreasing response times over the course of the experiment, effectively showing accent adaptation. Even though the total amount of improvement was similar for the auditory-only and audiovisual groups, initial rate of adaptation was faster in the audiovisual group. Hearing sensitivity and short-term and working memory measures were associated with efficient processing of the novel accent. Analysis of the relationship between accent comprehension and the background tests revealed furthermore that selective attention and vocabulary size predicted the amount of adaptation over the course of the experiment. These results suggest that vocabulary knowledge and attentional abilities facilitate the attention-shifting strategies proposed to be required for perceptual learning.     

Grasp force control in older adults

Diminished tactile sensibility and impaired hand dexterity have been reported for elderly individuals. Reports that younger adults with severely impaired tactile sensibility use excessive grasp force during routine grasp and manipulation tasks raise the possibility that elderly persons likewise produce large grasp forces that may contribute to impaired dexterity. Impaired pseudomotor functioning also occurs in elderly subjects and may yield a slipperier skin surface that enhances the possibility for excessive grasp force. The present study measured grasp force in 10 elderly and 9 young adult individuals, during grasp and vertical lift of a small object, using a precision (pinch) grip of the thumb and index finger. The slipperiness of the object's gripped surfaces was unexpectedly varied. Skin slipperiness was estimated by also measuring the grasp force at which the object slipped from grasp. The older subjects employed grasp forces that were, on average, twice as large as those of the young subjects, with some producing forces many times greater than the young subjects' average grip force. Grip forces also were significantly more variable across trials in older subjects. This increased variability was not caused simply by the elderly subjects' increased grip force. A portion of the increased force was due to increased skin slipperiness. The grip force that the elderly subjects produced in excess of the slip force (the "margin of safety" against object slippage) was larger than would have been predicted from their skin slipperiness, however. It is suggested that, in part, the excessive grasp forces represent a strategic response to tactile sensibility impairment. Twopoint discrimination limina in the older subjects averaged about four times greater than in the younger subjects. Increased grasp forces in elderly persons may result from other factors, such as increased variability in grip force production. The contributions of excessive grasp forces to impaired dexterity in older persons still need to be addressed experimentally.     

Training attentional control in older adults

ABSTRACT

Recent research has demonstrated benefits for older adults from training attentional control using a variable priority strategy, but the construct validity of the training task and the degree to which benefits of training transfer to other contexts are unclear. The goal of this study was to characterize baseline performance on the training task in a sample of 105 healthy older adults and to test for transfer of training in a subset (n?=?21). Training gains after 5 days and extent of transfer was compared to another subset (n?=?20) that served as a control group. Baseline performance on the training task was characterized by a two-factor model of working memory and processing speed. Processing speed correlated with the training task. Training gains in speed and accuracy were reliable and robust (ps <.001, η²?=?.57 to .90). Transfer to an analogous task was observed (ps <.05, η²?=?.10 to .17). The beneficial effect of training did not translate to improved performance on related measures of processing speed. This study highlights the robust effect of training and transfer to a similar context using a variable priority training task. Although processing speed is an important aspect of the training task, training benefit is either related to an untested aspect of the training task or transfer of training is limited to the training context.     

想象膨胀范式下错误记忆的老化效应

通过2个实验探究想象膨胀范式下老年人的错误记忆特点及其认知机制。实验1采用经典想象膨胀实验范式, 考察老年人是否会产生比年轻人更大的想象膨胀错误记忆效应; 实验2引入情景特异性诱导技术, 进一步考察老年人的想象膨胀错误记忆可能的认知机制。研究结果表明：(1)老年人与年轻人均表现出显著的想象膨胀错误记忆, 但老年人并没有比年轻人产生更多的错误记忆; (2)当通过情景特异性诱导技术有效增加了老年人在事件想象过程中的内在细节数量后, 老年人的错误记忆显著上升。该结果揭示对事件情景的想象过程是想象膨胀错误记忆发生的关键环节, 老年人没有表现出明显的老化效应, 主要是由于该群体随年龄增长表现出在回忆/想象情景事件时内部细节缺乏这一特征所致。研究结果支持了建构性情景模拟假说和激活/监测理论。     

Personality and sexuality in older adults

Objective: This study explored cross-time associations between personality and multiple components of sexual functioning and behaviour in a large cohort of older adults (n = 5745).

Design: Participants (M_age = 65.57 ± 8.28 years) completed questionnaires in 2010 and 2012.

Main outcome measures: Outcomes explored included sexual attitudes, sexual activity, sexual satisfaction, lifetime sexual partners, sexual orientation and sexual dysfunction.

Results: We found that higher levels of openness and lower levels of agreeableness were related to more liberal attitudes toward sex, a greater number of sexual partners, a higher sex drive, more frequent sexual activity, lower levels of sexual dysfunction and (for women) a greater tendency towards homosexuality. Higher levels of conscientiousness were also related to more conservative attitudes towards sex, lower levels of sexual dysfunction and a greater tendency towards heterosexuality. For sexually active older adults, higher levels of extraversion and lower levels of neuroticism were related to greater sexual satisfaction. Higher levels of extraversion and lower levels of conscientiousness were also related to a greater number of sexual partners in men but not women.

Conclusion: These findings provide evidence that personality is an important correlate of sexual functioning and behaviour in older adults.     

记忆的前向测试效应对老年人学习新事物的作用

为检验前置测试是否可以有效地提升老年人学习新事物的能力,参与实验的老年人被随机分为有前置测试的实验组和无前置测试的对照组,在实验1中学习了5列单词,在实验2中记忆了5列日用品,在实验3中学习了4段讲座视频。结果表明,实验组老年人对新事物的记忆成绩均高于对照组的老年人。结论认为,前置测试能够显著提升老年人学习新事物的能力,干扰降低与学习参与相结合的"加减"理论能更好地解释提升老年人记忆的前向测试效应。     

Task demand effects on postural control in older adults

The literature shows conflicting results regarding older adults' (OA) postural control performance. Differing task demands amongst scientific studies may contribute to such ambiguous results. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the performance of postural control in older adults and the relationship between visual information and body sway as a function of task demands. Old and young adults (YA) maintained an upright stance on different bases of support (normal, tandem and reduced), both with and without vision, and both with and without room movement. In the more demanding tasks, the older adults displayed greater body sway than the younger adults and older adults were more influenced by the manipulation of the visual information due to the room movement. However, in the normal support condition, the influence of the moving room was similar for the two groups. These results suggest that task demand is an important aspect to consider when examining postural control in older adults.