Children's perceptions of and beliefs about facial maturity

The author studied children's and young adult's perceptions of facial age and beliefs about the sociability, cognitive ability, and physical fitness of adult faces. From pairs of photographs of adult faces, participants (4-6 years old, 8-10 years old, 13-16 years old, and 19-23 years old) selected the one face that appeared younger, older, better at remembering, smarter, more caring, friendlier, healthier, or stronger. Pairings consisted of faces at different adult age levels (young adults, middle-age adults, older adults, and very old adults.) Older participants were more sensitive to age differences in older faces and to faces more proximal in age. Children and adolescents believed that very old adult faces appeared to be less cognitively able than middle-aged faces (for children) and young adult faces (for adolescents). Very old male faces were judged to be less sociable. Old and very old faces were judged to be less physically fit than young and middle-aged faces. Significant positive correlation coefficients were found between the youngest children's abilities to discriminate between the adult faces of proximal age and youthful biases when selecting faces appearing to be more sociable and cognitively able. The results are discussed with respect to the development of facial information-processing skills and how those skills may be associated with the development of and changes in beliefs about older adults.     

成年女性情景自传体记忆的现象学体验：年龄与时间的作用

目的：考察成年女性情景自传体记忆(EAM)的现象学体验是否受年龄和事件发生时间的影响。方法：95名老、中、青年女性被试详细回述童年及近一年的自传体事件各一件,并完成自传体记忆问卷。结果：所有被试在近期记忆的大多数体验得分上显著高于童年期记忆,年龄主效应及交互作用不显著。在近期记忆的情绪体验上,中、老年女性比青年女性更积极。结论：成年女性EAM的现象学体验受时间影响明显,受年龄影响不大;中、老年女性的EAM现象学体验表现出一定的积极情绪偏向。     

抑制对老年人舌尖现象的影响

抑制不足理论认为老年人抑制能力不足, 易受干扰信息的影响, 阻碍对目标词的检索, 故比年轻人有更多舌尖现象。实验1操纵抑制通达子功能探讨其在老年人舌尖现象中的作用, 采用2(干扰条件：有、无)×2(年龄组：老年、年轻)的混合设计, 相比于无干扰条件, 干扰条件下舌尖现象年龄差异变得更大, 表明老年人舌尖现象和通达功能有关。实验2操纵抑制删除子功能, 采用2(是否激活干扰：是、否)×2(年龄组：老年、年轻)的混合设计, 不激活干扰条件下舌尖现象年龄差异不显著, 而激活干扰条件下舌尖现象年龄差异显著, 舌尖现象随龄增多与删除功能不足有关。通达和删除功能不足是老年人舌尖现象增多的重要原因。     

Age differences in estimating vehicle velocity

Automobile accidents among older adults may be related to difficulties in judging the speed of other vehicles. To examine this possibility, 3 groups of observers in the young adult, middle-aged, and older adult age ranges were asked to estimate the velocity of an isolated automobile traveling at 15-50 mph (24-80 kph). Across all age groups, perceived and actual velocity were related by a power function with an exponent of 1.36. Age was significantly and positively correlated with intercepts, but negatively correlated with exponents; that is, older observers showed less sensitivity to changes in actual velocity. Results bear on the issues of ontogenetic changes in accident involvement and sensitivity to motion.     

Developmental features of rapid aiming arm movements across the lifespan

Using a lifespan approach, the authors investigated developmental features of the control of ballistic aiming arm movements by manipulating movement complexity, response uncertainty, and the use of precues. Four different age groups of participants (6- and 9-year-old boys and girls and 24- and 73-year-old men and women, 20 participants in each age group) performed 7 types of rapid aiming arm movements on the surface of a digitizer. Their movement characteristics such as movement velocity, normalized jerk, relative timing, movement linearity, and intersegment intervals were profiled. Analyses of variance with repeated measures were conducted on age and task effects in varying movement complexity (Study 1), response uncertainty (Study 2), and precue use (Study 3) conditions. Young children and senior adults had slower, more variant, less smooth, and less linear arm movements than older children and young adults. Increasing the number of movement segments resulted in slower and more variant responses. Movement accuracy demands or response uncertainty interacted with age so that the 6- and 74-year-old participants had poorer performances but responded similarly to the varying treatments. Even though older children and young adults had better performances than young children and senior adults, their arm movement performance declined when response uncertainty increased. The analyses suggested that young children's and senior adults' performances are poorer because less of their movement is under central control, and they therefore use on-line adjustments. In addition, older children and young adults use a valid precue more effectively to prepare for subsequent movements than do young children and senior adults, suggesting that older children and young adults are more capable of organizing motor responses than are young children and senior adults.     

Developmental Features of Rapid Aiming Arm Movements Across the Lifespan

Using a lifespan approach, the authors investigated developmental features of the control of ballistic aiming arm movements by manipulating movement complexity, response uncertainty, and the use of precues. Four different age groups of participants (6- and 9-year-old boys and girls and 24- and 73-year- old men and women, 20 participants in each age group) performed 7 types of rapid aiming arm movements on the surface of a digitizer. Their movement characteristics such as movement velocity, normalized jerk, relative timing, movement linearity, and intersegment intervals were profiled. Analyses of variance with repeated measures were conducted on age and task effects in varying movement complexity (Study 1), response uncertainty (Study 2), and precue use (Study 3) conditions. Young children and senior adults had slower, more variant, less smooth, and less linear arm movements than older children and young adults. Increasing the number of movement segments resulted in slower and more variant responses. Movement accuracy demands or response uncertainty interacted with age so that the 6- and 74-year-old participants had poorer performances but responded similarly to the varying treatments. Even though older children and young adults had better performances than young children and senior adults, their arm movement performance declined when response uncertainty increased. The analyses suggested that young children's and senior adults' performances are poorer because less of their movement is under central control, and they therefore use on-line adjustments. In addition, older children and young adults use a valid precue more effectively to prepare for subsequent movements than do young children and senior adults, suggesting that older children and young adults are more capable of organizing motor responses than arc young children and senior adults.     

Anger and sadness in response to an emotionally neutral film: evidence for age-specific associations with well-being

When the association between emotion and well-being is being considered, positive emotions usually come to mind. However, negative emotions serve important adaptive functions and particular negative emotions may be especially adaptive at different stages of adult development. We examined the associations between self-reported negative emotions in response to an emotionally neutral, thematically ambiguous film and subjective well-being among 76 young (age 20-29), 73 middle-aged (age 40-49), and 73 older (age 60-69) adults. Results indicated that higher self-reported anger in response to the film was associated with higher well-being for middle-aged adults, but not for young and older adults. Higher self-reported sadness in response to the film was associated with higher well-being for older adults, but not for young and middle-aged adults. These findings were stronger for cognitive well-being (i.e., satisfaction with life) than for affective well-being (i.e., ratio of dispositional positive to negative affect) and were specific to these emotions (not found for self-reported disgust or fear) and to the emotionally neutral film (not found for sad or disgusting films). Results are discussed in terms of the functions that anger and sadness are thought to serve and the control opportunities afforded in midlife and late life that render these functions differentially adaptive.     

Changes in Event-Based Prospective Memory Across Adulthood

Conflicting results in the literature raise the possibility of a nonmonotonic relationship between adult age and event-based prospective memory performance. In this study, young (n = 45; mean age = 20), middle-aged (n = 56; mean age = 59), and elderly (n = 59; mean age = 76) volunteers were shown slides of famous people. The background task was to name each face while the prospective memory task was to mark the trial number if the person was wearing glasses. Although the stimuli were selected to favor the older participants, the proportion of prospective memory responses to target events declined monotonically with increasing age (.77, .62, and .26, for the young, middle-aged, and elderly, respectively). Analysis of the prospective memory data in terms of hazard functions for the first failure and the first success also revealed some significant age deficits. The elderly group reported thinking less about the prospective memory component than the young and middle-aged groups. Also, the elderly group was less likely to blame the demands of the background task for their prospective memory failures than the young and middle-aged groups. However, age differences in prospective memory performance remained significant after controlling (in separate analyses) for past experience (hazard functions), memory for the task instructions, self-rated thoughts, and reasons for failure. The results are discussed in relation to work on goal neglect, and possible explanations for the conflicting results in the literature are presented.     

Regrets and Subjective Well-Being: A Life Course Approach

The aim of the study was to examine age and gender differences in the contents of regrets, and the association between regrets and subjective well-being. The sample consisted of 176 participants ranging in age from 19 to 82 years. The results showed that young adults (19–29 years) named regrets related to relationships and leisure more often than middle-aged (30–54 years) and older adults (55–82 years), whereas regrets related to work and family were more salient among middle-aged and older adults. Furthermore, gender comparison revealed that regrets concerning relationships and family were more frequent among women than among men. Related to subjective well-being, results showed that regrets concerning education and work were negatively associated with life satisfaction, and depressive symptoms associated with self-related regrets.     

Attributions for Memory Performance in Adulthood: Age Differences and Mediation Effects

We examined age differences in attributions to internal (controllable and uncontrollable), external (uncontrollable), and unstable factors for performance on a free recall memory task in 149 young, middle-aged, and older adults. Attributions varied by age and by level of memory performance. Middle-aged and older adults rated internal, uncontrollable factors (ability and genes) as more influential for high performance than for low performance, and they were less likely than young adults to attribute low performance to these factors. Within age groups, only the older adults rated memory ability as more influential than strategy use, even though they were as likely as the other age groups to use a categorization strategy. Attributions to both internal controllable (strategy use) and uncontrollable (ability) factors as well as to health were associated with better memory performance. These attributions partially mediated the relationship between age and memory performance. Thus, attributions may provide some insight into sources of age differences in memory performance.     

Search and selection processes in implicit and explicit word-stem completion performance in young, middle-aged, and older adults

In the present investigation, we sought to (1) replicate previous reports of impaired word-stem completion (WSC) priming and cued recall performance in older adults, (2) gain a better understanding of the differential roles of search and selection processes in implicit and explicit WSC, and (3) determine the particular aspects of WSC performance that are influenced by age. Experiment 1 demonstrated that older adults primed and recalled fewer items on a WSC task than middle-aged adults did, who in turn primed and recalled fewer items than young adults did. A series of item analyses indicated that choice of a stem completion is influenced by two independent sources of information: the familiarity of the completion reflected by word frequency and the cue-specific match between the stem and the completion word based on the common pronunciation of the stem. Experiment 2 demonstrated that older adults utilized cue-specific matching to the same degree as young and middle-aged adults. However, the impact of target familiarity changed across the lifespan. Older adults produced and recalled high-frequency targets as well as young adults but produced and recalled fewer low-frequency targets than did young participants. The results are consistent with the view that older adults rely on familiarity to a greater degree than do young adults.     

Attitudes toward older adults: The perceived value of grandparent as a social role

The present study examined the discrepancy between young and middle-aged adults' persistently negative attitudes toward older adults in general and their consistently positive attitudes toward grandparents. Two hundred-twenty young and middle-aged college students completed the Aging Semantic Differential and indicated or estimated (where appropriate) the average age for three categories of older adults: old people in general, typical (i.e., hypothetical, prototypical) grandparents, and their own grandparents. A pattern of results emerged in which students viewed older adults less positively than typical grandparents, who generally were viewed less positively than known grandparents. Because older people in general and typical grandparents were estimated as being similar in age, the positive attitudes expressed toward typical grandparents may be attributed to the social role of grandparent over and above any bias against increased age. Because students were most positive about their own grandparents, aspects of their individual grandparental relationships appear to have an additional, additive effect.     

The influence of age on consistent and varied semantic-category search performance

Three experiments examined age-related consistent mapping (CM) and varied mapping (VM) practice effects. In separate experiments, young (age, 19-22), middle-aged (37-50), and older (64-88) adults' performance was examined using semantic-category and letter-based search paradigms. After extensive practice, major age differences occurred in CM search. Young and middle-aged subjects showed near-zero comparison slopes, large reductions in mean reaction times, and substantial reductions in response variability. Although older adults' reaction time decreased with CM practice, the reduction in reaction time, comparison slope, and response variability was small compared with the other groups. In VM search, older subjects were slower than the other age groups, but all groups exhibited similar linear set-size functions, search termination, and comparison-load effects. We concluded that age-associated declines in cognitive performance may be due in large part to the degree with which older adults can acquire or use automatic processes to perform tasks.     

Adult Age and Gender Differences in Eyewitness Recall in Field Settings1

Six-hundred-fifty-one citizens were stopped in public places and tested for prompted recall of physical characteristics of a young woman to whom they had spoken for approximately 15 s, 2 min earlier. Recall differed as a function of the two targets used on five of eight characteristics, but no significant differences were found for either target as a function of the gender or age group of the witnesses. Young adults (18-29 years of age) in general were superior to middle-aged adults (30-44), who in turn were superior to older adults (45-65). Women were significantly more accurate than men in accuracy of recall for weight, and for characteristics judged to be more important than less important for person memory. Male and female witnesses were equally confident in their recall performance. Young and middle-aged groups were significantly more confident in recall than the oldest group. Significant correlations were found between confidence and accuracy of recall for men and for women, and for each age group. Women made significantly longer duration estimates of the encounters with the targets than did men. Men overestimated the duration by a 2:1 ratio, and women overestimated by a 3:1 ratio. No significant correlations were found between accuracy of duration estimates and confidence in reports. The results were interpreted in terms of their forensic importance.     

Source monitoring and suggestibility to misinformation: adult age‐related differences

We compared young and older adults' source monitoring performance on an explicit source identification test using the misinformation paradigm. Several age‐related differences in source memory were demonstrated: (a) older adults were more likely than were young adults to say that they saw information that was actually only suggested to them; (b) older adults were more confident in their false memories than were young adults; (c) older adults were less confident in their accurate memory for the source of information than were young adults. Together, the data suggest that older adults either lacked or failed to use helpful diagnostic source information (e.g. perceptual details or temporal information), and that their confidence in their false memories reflected an over‐weighting of semantic information. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Neuroticism, extraversion, goals, and subjective well-being: Exploring the relations in young, middle-aged, and older adults

The positive association between intrinsic, as opposed to extrinsic, goal importance and Subjective Well-Being (SWB) is well-documented. However, less is known whether these associations are consistent across age groups and when simultaneously considering personality traits. Structural equation models conducted with young, middle-aged, and older adults indicated that neuroticism was negatively related to SWB across age groups, while extraversion and intrinsic goal importance held age-differential associations: Extraversion was related to SWB in the two younger age groups, whereas in older adults only an indirect effect emerged via intrinsic goal importance. Intrinsic goal importance was related to SWB among young and older adults but not among middle-aged adults. These results underscore the importance of age-differential associations in determinants of SWB.     

Stable middle-aged face recognition: No moderation of the own-age bias across contexts

The own-age bias (OAB) has been proposed to be caused by perceptual expertise and/or social-cognitive mechanisms. Investigations into the role of social cognition have, however, yielded mixed results. One reason for this might be the tendency for research to focus on the OAB in young adults, between young and older adult faces where other-age individuation experience is low. To explore whether social-cognitive manipulations may be successful when observers have sufficient other-age individuation experience, we examined biases involving middle-aged other-age faces and the influence of a context manipulation. Across four experiments, young adult participants were presented with middle-aged faces alongside young or older adult faces to remember. We predicted that in contexts where middle-aged faces were positioned as other-age faces (alongside young adult faces), recognition performance would be worse than when they were positioned as relative own-age faces (alongside older adult faces). However, the context manipulations did not moderate middle age face recognition. This suggests that past findings that context does not change other-age face recognition holds for other-age faces for which observers have higher individuation experience. These findings are consistent with a perceptual expertise account of the OAB but more investigation of the generality of these results is required.     

Body Image in Adulthood: A Projective Approach

A sample of 210 persons varying by age (young adults, middle-aged, older adults), gender, and relationship status (single or involved) were administered the Holtzman Inkblot Technique (HIT) and Geriatric Draw-A-Person (G–DAP) to ascertain projectively assessed aspects of body image in adulthood. Results suggested that both the HIT and G–DAP were sensitive to the effects of age and gender, wherein young adults scored higher on both HIT Barrier and Penetration than both middle-aged or older adults. In addition, G–DAP scorns favored young adults. Hilt Penetration scores varied by both age and relationship status.     

Relative numerousness judgment and summation in young, middle-aged, and older adult orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus abelii and Pongo pygmaeus pygmaeus)

The ability to select the larger of two quantities ranging from 1 to 5 (relative numerousness judgment [RNJ[) and the ability to select the larger of two pairs of quantities with each pair ranging from 1 to 8 (summation) were evaluated in young, middle-aged, and older adult orangutans (7 Pongo pygmaeus abelii and 2 Pongo pygmaeus pygmaeus). Summation accuracy and RNJ were similar to those of previous reports in apes; however, the pattern of age-related differences with regard to these tasks was different from that previously reported in gorillas. Older orangutans were less accurate than the young and middle-aged for RNJ, and summation accuracy was equivalent among age groups. Evidence was found to suggest that the young and middle-aged based their selection of the largest quantity pair on both quantities within each pair during the summation task. These results show a relationship between subject age and the quantitative abilities of adult orangutans.