Perceptions of Responsibility and Mental Health Help-Seeking Among Psychologically Distressed Older Adults

This study explored the perceptions of responsibility for the cause and the solution of problems and the models of helping (or helping orientations) characterizing a sample of 319 community-dwelling, psychologically distressed older adults. All participants were referred for psychotherapy and had either accepted or rejected their referrals. We investigated whether the models distinguished acceptors and rejecters of psychotherapy referrals and whether they were differentially associated with help-seeking from nontherapist helpers. Results indicated that the preponderance of respondents subscribed to the moral and compensatory models. The compensatory model was associated with rejection of referrals, whereas the moral model was associated with increased help-seeking both from mental health professionals and from other formal and informal helpers. Implications of the findings for promoting older adults' utilization of mental health services are discussed.     

Dependency Stereotypes and Aging: The Implications for Getting and Giving Help in Later Life

Older adults are often stereotyped as dependent on others. This study explored how seeing an older adult receiving help triggers the dependency stereotype, by examining perceptions of older and younger adults helping and being helped by others. Participants (183 younger and older adults) read vignettes of young and old people helping others and rated the helpers and helpees on 2 variables: one a composite of dependency and capability; and the other composed of thoughtfulness, generosity, and unselfishness (i.e., considerateness). Participants rated older helpees as dependent, no matter who helped them. Younger helpers and those who helped the elderly rated high on considerateness. Females rated helpers more positively than did males. Implications of these findings for older adults are discussed.     

Michael Jackson,Bin Laden and I: Functions of positive and negative,public and private flashbulb memories

This study examined the perceived psychosocial functions of flashbulb memories: It compared positive and negative public flashbulb memories (positive: Bin Laden's death, negative: Michael Jackson's death) with private ones (positive: pregnancy, negative: death of a loved one). A sample of n = 389 young and n = 176 middle-aged adults answered canonical category questions used to identify flashbulb memories and rated the personal significance, the psychological temporal distance, and the functions of each memory (i.e., self-continuity, social-boding, directive functions). Hierarchical regressions showed that, in general, private memories were rated more functional than public memories. Positive and negative private memories were comparable in self-continuity and directionality, but the positive private memory more strongly served social functions. In line with the positivity bias in autobiographical memory, positive flashbulb memories felt psychologically closer than negative ones. Finally, middle-aged adults rated their memories as less functional regarding self-continuity and social-bonding than young adults. Results are discussed regarding the tripartite model of autobiographical memory functions.     

Effects of practice on the matching familiar figures test: A comparison of young,middle-aged and elderly adults

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of practice on a modified version of the Matching Familiar Figures test in young, middle-aged and elderly adults. Forty-eight young, 48 middle-aged and 48 elderly adults were each presented with 48 match-to-standard items. the dependent variables were the number of errors committed and the latency to first response. the performance of both young and middle-aged adults reflected rather stable speed/accuracy trade-off decisions that did not change as a function of practice. the young adults responded more quickly and made more errors than the middle-aged adults across all 48 trials. the performance of elderly adults, on the other hand, did change as a result of practice; their latencies increased and their error rate decreased across trials. Elderly adults started out making more errors than young adults but by the end of the 48 trials, their error rate was lower than that of young adults. In the final trials, the error rate of elderly adults was midway between the rates of young and middle-aged adults. Thus, practice facilitated the performance of elderly adults but had no effect on the performance of young and middle-aged adults.     

The Effects of Age,Sex and Alzheimer's Disease on Strategy Use During Verbal Fluency Tasks

ABSTRACT

Clustering and switching strategies during phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks were investigated in healthy adults (n = 193, 86 males, 20–90 years) in young, middle-aged, young–old, and old–old age groups (Study 1). Older groups produced fewer total words and lower switching scores; males relied more on clustering and females on switching to produce equivalent output. In Study 2, early Alzheimer's disease participants, compared to healthy older adults, (n = 26 per group) produced fewer total words and smaller average clusters. Sex, age, and clinical differences on switching and clustering strategies support a dual processing model of verbal fluency.     

Moral virtue and practical wisdom: theme comprehension in children, youth, and adults

The authors tested 3 hypotheses about the relation of moral comprehension to prudential comprehension by contrasting comprehension of themes in moral stories with comprehension of themes in prudential stories among third-grade, fifth-grade, and college students (n = 168) in Study 1, and among college students, young and middle-aged adults, and older adults (n = 96) in Study 2. In both studies, all groups were statistically significantly better at moral theme comprehension than prudential theme comprehension, suggesting that moral comprehension may develop prior to prudential comprehension. In Study 2, all groups performed equally on moral theme generation whereas both adult groups were significantly better than college students on prudential theme generation. Overall, the findings of these studies provide modest evidence that moral and prudential comprehension each develop separately, and that the latter may develop more slowly.     

A pilot study of performance in young and middle-aged adults on verbal recall

The objective was to explore whether middle-aged adults (M age = 48.9 yr.; n = 26) differed on verbal recall from young adults (M age = 26.3 yr.; n = 26). Little data exist on the performance of middle-aged, healthy adults. Groups of young and middle-aged adults recalled words from the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test across six trials during a single session. The same 15 words were used for recall in Trials 1-5. Prior to the sixth trial, 15 distractor words were presented. Participants then recalled the original set of 15 words. No significant differences occurred on any of the recall trials. Although the power of this study was low, the effect of age is apparently quite small.     

The psychological distance of memories: Examining causal relations with mood and self-esteem in young,middle-aged and older adults

Three studies examined the self-enhancement function of autobiographical memory (measured with subjective temporal distance of memories). Participants recalled a memory of an attained and a failed goal and rated the subjective distance between each memory and the present. Study 1 showed that young adults with higher self-esteem felt closer to memories of attained goals and farther from failure memories than those with lower self-esteem. In Study 2, young, middle-aged and older adults with higher self-esteem felt closer to success memories, whereas self-esteem was unrelated to the temporal distance of failure memories. In both studies, feeling closer to success memories (and far from failure) led to enhanced mood. In Study 3, state self-esteem was experimentally manipulated. The manipulation had no effect on young and older adults, but middle-aged adults whose self-esteem was decreased, felt closer to success memories than failure memories. Results are discussed in relation to the temporal self-appraisal theory.     

How well do elderly people cope with uncertainty in a learning task?

The relation between age, task complexity and learning performance in a Multiple Cue Probability Learning task was studied by systematically varying the level of uncertainty present in the task, keeping constant the direction of relationships. Four age groups were constituted: young adults (mean age = 21), middle-aged adults (45), elderly people (69) and very elderly people (81). Five uncertainty levels were considered: predictability = 0.96, 0.80, 0.64, 0.48, and 0.32. All relationships involved were direct ones. A strong effect of uncertainty on 'control', a measure of the subject's consistency with respect to a linear model, was found. This effect was essentially a linear one. To each decrement in predictability of the task corresponded an equal decrement in participants' level of control. This level of decrement was the same, regardless of the age of the participant. It can be concluded that elderly people cope with uncertainty in probability learning tasks as well as young adults.     

公正世界信念对大学生助人意愿的影响：责任归因和帮助代价的作用

采用个人公正世界信念量表、自编的助人假设情境,先后以198名、415名大学生为被试,通过两项研究考察了责任归因和帮助代价在个人公正世界信念影响个体助人意愿中的作用。结果表明：（1）个人公正世界信念及个体对受困者遭遇的外归因,均可以显著正向预测个体的助人意愿,但个人公正世界信念与责任归因之间无显著相关。控制性别、年级和社会称许性的影响后,个体对受困者遭遇的外归因及个人公正世界信念分别可以解释5.7%和6%的变异;（2）个人公正世界信念对助人意愿的作用受到帮助代价与责任归因的调节,只有在低代价、外归因的条件下,个人公正世界信念越强,助人意愿才越高。这些结果对亲社会行为的促进具有重要启示。     

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.     

Conflict monitoring and adaptation to affective stimuli as a function of ageing

The current study investigated whether preference for positive affect would be observed in the context of a higher order control process with increasing age given the premise of affective prioritization with ageing. The study examined how affect interacted with cognitive control mechanisms across young, middle-aged and older adults. Conflict monitoring and adaptation for affective stimuli was examined with a face-word Stroop task using happy and fearful facial expressions. The participants’ task was to detect the emotional expression (Happy or Fear) of the face shown with a distractor word (Happy or Fear) written across the face. Reaction time and accuracy data was analysed to compare adaptation effect and Stroop interference as a function of age, valence and previous trial congruence. The results demonstrated a stronger adaptation effect for negative affect in young adults and for positive affect in middle-aged adults and older adults. These results can be explained in terms of the socio-emotional selectivity theory of affective bias in the elderly and the involvement of attentional control mechanisms. This study empirically demonstrates shifts in affective bias towards positive affect with ageing through the implicit recruitment of cognitive control.

     

Age,skill, and contextual cuing in target detection

This study examined the extent to which structural regularities inherent in visual arrays help to guide target detection and reduce age-related differences in skilled visual search performance. The target-detection performance of medical laboratory technologists in 2 age groups (M = 24.3 years and M = 49.0 years) and age-matched novices was assessed using images of bacterial morphology taken from Gram's stain photomicrographs as targets and search arrays. For skilled observers, response times were longer for middle-aged adults than for young adults except when external location cues were available, or when contextual cues inherent in the array were available to guide target detection. These results demonstrate that contextual information aids the skilled search of middle-aged experts, and suggest that contextual cuing is 1 means by which middle-aged adults can circumvent the effects of normally age-deficient processes on performance in a skilled domain.     

Attributing autonomous versus introjected motivation to helpers and the recipient experience: Effects on gratitude,attitudes, and well-being

Three studies examined the effects of motivation attributed to helpers on recipient reactions. Participants read and responded to scenarios depicting various helping events, in which indicators of helpers having autonomous or controlled (introjected) motivations were embedded. Results showed that recipients experienced more gratitude toward autonomous helpers than those helping for controlled motivations. Helping interactions involving more autonomous attributions were also predictive of positive attitudes toward helpers, positive affect, and felt closeness. Gratitude mediated the effects of autonomous versus controlled helping on recipient positive attitude, well-being, and closeness to helpers. Study 3 confirmed that helper autonomous motivation independently predicted gratitude and other positive reactions to receiving help even when controlling for other important attributions, namely, perceived helper empathy, cost to helper, valuing of help, and perceived similarity.     

Characteristics of problem gamblers 56 years of age or older: a statewide study of casino self-excluders

Gambling among older adults appears to be increasing, though little is known about the characteristics of older adult problem gamblers. The purpose of this study was to compare older adults to younger and middle-aged adults in a cohort of problem gamblers participating in a state-administered casino self-exclusion program. Self-reported problem gamblers (N = 1,601) who voluntary banned themselves from Missouri casinos from 2001 to 2003 were categorized by age as younger adults (ages 21 to 35; n = 490), middle-aged adults (ages 36 to 55; n = 950), and older adults (ages 56 to 79; n = 161), and were compared with respect to demographic variables, gambling participation, and reasons for self-exclusion. Older adult self-excluders typically began gambling in midlife, experienced gambling problems around age 60, reported preferences for nonstrategic forms of gambling, and identified fear of suicide as the primary reason for self-excluding. Implications for intervention, prevention and treatment are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).     

Stronger evidence for own-age effects in memory for older as compared to younger adults

Three studies examined whether younger and older adults better recall information associated with their own than information related to another age group. All studies compared young and older adults with respect to incidental memory for previously presented stimuli (Studies 1 and 2: everyday objects; Study 3: vacation advertisements) that had been randomly paired with an age-related cue (e.g., photo of a young or an old person; the word "young" or "old"). All three studies found the expected interaction of participants' age and age-associated information. Studies 1 and 2 showed that the memory bias for information arbitrarily associated with one's own as compared to another age group was significant for older adults only. However, when age-relevance was introduced in a context of equal importance to younger and older adults (information about vacations paired either with pictures of young or older adults), the memory bias for one's own age group was clearly present for both younger and older adults (Study 3).     

Stronger evidence for own-age effects in memory for older as compared to younger adults

Three studies examined whether younger and older adults better recall information associated with their own than information related to another age group. All studies compared young and older adults with respect to incidental memory for previously presented stimuli (Studies 1 and 2: everyday objects; Study 3: vacation advertisements) that had been randomly paired with an age-related cue (e.g., photo of a young or an old person; the word “young” or “old”). All three studies found the expected interaction of participants’ age and age-associated information. Studies 1 and 2 showed that the memory bias for information arbitrarily associated with one's own as compared to another age group was significant for older adults only. However, when age-relevance was introduced in a context of equal importance to younger and older adults (information about vacations paired either with pictures of young or older adults), the memory bias for one's own age group was clearly present for both younger and older adults (Study 3).     

Images of midlife development among young,middle-aged,and older adults

This study examined patterns of perceived change across adulthood in a sample of 121 young (M age=19.8 years), middle-aged (M age=47.9 years) and older (M age=74.6 years) adults. Subjects rated amount of stress in life domains, salience of life course issues, and nature of personal attributes for young, middle-aged, and older targets. Seven prototypical patterns of perceived change were found. Midlife was seen as a period with many responsibilities, increased stress in several domains, and little time for leisure, but also as a peak in competence, ability to handle stress, sense of control, productivity, and social responsibility. The findings are discussed in terms of losses, which were seen primarily in the physical realm, and gains, which were mainly seen in the psychological and social realms.     

Let me guess how old you are: effects of age, gender, and facial expression on perceptions of age

Perceptions of age influence how we evaluate, approach, and interact with other people. Based on a paramorphic human judgment model, the present study investigates possible determinants of accuracy and bias in age estimation across the adult life span. For this purpose, 154 young, middle-aged, and older participants of both genders estimated the age of 171 faces of young, middle-aged, and older men and women, portrayed on a total of 2,052 photographs. Each face displayed either an angry, fearful, disgusted, happy, sad, or neutral expression (FACES database; Ebner, Riediger, & Lindenberger, 2010). We found that age estimation ability decreased with age. Older and young adults, however, were more accurate and less biased in estimating the age of members of their own as compared with those of the other age group. In contrast, no reliable own-gender advantage was observed. Generally, the age of older faces was more difficult to estimate than the age of younger faces. Furthermore, facial expressions had a substantial impact on accuracy and bias of age estimation. Relative to other facial expressions, the age of neutral faces was estimated most accurately, while the age of faces displaying happy expressions was most likely underestimated. Results are discussed in terms of methodological and practical implications for research on age estimation.     

Effects of Encoding Tasks on the Own-Age Face Recognition Bias

In the current study, we evaluated the own-age face recognition bias by using various encoding tasks to evaluate the robustness and potential limitations of the own-age bias. One hundred sixty young adults studied photographs of children, young adults, middle-aged adults, and older adults and were assigned to one of four encoding conditions (i.e., age estimate, attractiveness rating, friendliness rating, and a face search task). Subsequent recognition tests revealed a robust own-age bias such that participants recognized own-age faces better than other-age faces regardless of encoding task. The current study showed that encoding tasks that focus on socially relevant characteristics (i.e., attractiveness ratings and friendliness ratings) do not eliminate or weaken the own-age bias compared to tasks that specifically focus on the age of the face. These findings indicate that in-group/out-group categorization requires little conscious processing and may be automatic, which is consistent with Sporer's (2001) in-group/out-group model (IOM) of facial processing.