The reciprocal effects of leisure time activities and intellectual functioning in older people: a longitudinal analysis

By using data from a representative longitudinal survey, the authors provide strong evidence that complex leisure time activities increase intellectual functioning for workers and nonworkers. Although the effects were relatively moderate, both the present article and its predecessor on the effects of paid work (C. Schooler. Mulatu, & Oates. 1999) showed that, even in old age, carrying out complex tasks has a positive effect on intellectual processes. In both cases, initially high levels of intellectual functioning led to high levels of environmental complexity, which in turn raised levels of intellectual functioning, thus providing a pathway contributing to the high correlation of intellectual functioning over a 20-year period in middle and late adulthood. The present findings indicate that even in old age carrying out substantively complex tasks builds the capacity to deal with the intellectual challenges such complex environments provide.     

Intellectual and adaptive functioning in Sturge-Weber Syndrome

The present study examined the intellectual and adaptive functioning in a sample of children and young adults with Sturge-Weber Syndrome (SWS). A total of 80 research participants from a SWS study database underwent full neurological evaluation as part of their participation or concurrent medical care. Twenty-nine of the participants received neuropsychological evaluations. Analyses indicated no significant demographic or neurological differences between those who did and did not receive neuropsychological evaluations. Overall, the neuropsychological evaluation sample displayed significantly lower functioning relative to published normative data across domains of intellectual and adaptive functioning. Thirty-two percent of the sample displayed impaired performance (standard score ≤ 75) in intellectual functioning and 58% displayed impaired performance in adaptive functioning. Hemiparesis status independently predicted overall adaptive functioning while seizure frequency independently predicted overall intellectual functioning. Younger participants displayed significantly higher (more intact) ratings in adaptive functioning compared to older participants, specifically in overall adaptive functioning, motor skills, and community living skills. A composite measure of neurological status (SWS-NRS) incorporating seizure and hemiparesis status effectively distinguished between individuals with impaired or nonimpaired adaptive and intellectual functioning and showed promise as a screening method for identifying individuals with more involved intellectual and/or adaptive needs.     

Self-reported emotional intelligence, burnout and engagement among staff in services for people with intellectual disabilities

This study examined the relationship among dimensions of self-reported Emotional Intelligence, Engagement and Burnout, using the Trait Meta-Mood Scale, Maslach Burnout Inventory and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale in a sample of Spanish professionals who work at institutions for people with intellectual disabilities. The results showed that Emotional Clarity was significantly associated with Personal Accomplishment (r=.25) and Dedication (r=.25). Further, Repair to moods was significantly correlated with all Engagement dimensions (.20 Vigor, .30 Dedication, .36 Absorption) and with Personal Accomplishment (.31). These findings extend previous research with college students in which Clarity and Repair to moods subscales were relevant predictors of well-being indexes and interpersonal functioning and suggest that the Trait Meta-Mood Scale subscales also show significant relationships with emotional functioning and work-related variables in a professional sample.     

Exploitation in Older Adults: Personal Competence Correlates of Social Vulnerability

ABSTRACT

Clinical assessment of older people at heightened risk of financial exploitation (also termed social vulnerability) is a difficult task. There are a number of previously untested domains of personal competence which could influence social vulnerability in later life. In this study, intellectual, cognitive, and social-cognitive functioning was assessed in a combined sample of dementia patients (n = 31) and neurologically healthy individuals (n = 68) aged 50 years or over. Informants provided assessments of participants' social functioning, personality, and social vulnerability. In the combined sample, multiple regression analyses revealed significant relationships between each personal competence domain and (lower) social vulnerability, apart from personality which was non-significant. General cognitive functioning and, in particular, executive functioning showed significant overlap with social vulnerability after controlling for memory and age. Social measures were also important correlates of vulnerability, indicating that both neurocognitive and social cognitive deficits may contribute to financial exploitation in later life.     

Does age matter? Examining age-dependent differences in at-fault collisions after attending a refresher course for older drivers

The “Driver 65+” course is a voluntary refresher course offered to all drivers aged 65 years or older in Norway. The current study estimated differences in at-fault motor vehicle collisions (MVCs) between older drivers who had attended in the course and older drivers who had not attended the course.MethodsTwo samples of drivers were selected from the database of an insurance company and were sent a questionnaire in the mail. The first sample consisted of 2039 car owners aged 70 years or older who had reported a collision to the insurance company during the last 24 months. The second sample consisted of 1569 drivers aged 70 or older who had not reported any collisions during the last 24 months.ResultsThe results indicated an age-dependent effect; drivers attending the course before 75 years of age had a significantly lower risk of being the at-fault driver in a multi-MVC than older drivers who did not attend the course.ConclusionThe results indicate that the refresher course had a beneficial effect on collision risk for drivers who attended the course before reaching 75 years of age. One possible explanation of this age-dependent effect is that a certain level of visual, cognitive, and motor functioning is needed to implement the strategies learned in the course. However, the design of the study makes it difficult to draw definite conclusions about the causal relationship between course attendance and later collision involvement.     

The eyes know what you are thinking: eye movements as an objective measure of mind wandering

Paralleling the recent work by Reichle, Reineberg, and Schooler (2010), we explore the use of eye movements as an objective measure of mind wandering while participants performed a reading task. Participants were placed in a self-classified probe-caught mind wandering paradigm while their eye movements were recorded. They were randomly probed every 2–3 min and were required to indicate whether their mind had been wandering. The results show that eye movements were generally less complex when participants reported mind wandering episodes, with both duration and frequency of within-word regressions, for example, becoming significantly reduced. This is consistent with the theoretical claim that the cognitive processes that normally influence eye movements to enhance semantic processing during reading exert less control during mind wandering episodes.     

Probability matching in choice under uncertainty: Intuition versus deliberation

Gaissmaier and Schooler (2008) [Gaissmaier, W., & Schooler, L. J. (2008). The smart potential behind probability matching. Cognition, 109, 416-422] argue that probability matching, which has traditionally been viewed as a decision making error, may instead reflect an adaptive response to environments in which outcomes potentially follow predictable patterns. In choices involving monetary stakes, we find that probability matching persists even when it is not possible to identify or exploit outcome patterns and that many “probability matchers” rate an alternative strategy (maximizing) as superior when it is described to them. Probability matching appears to reflect a mistaken intuition that can be, but often is not, overridden by deliberate consideration of alternative choice strategies.     

Daily hassles,marital functioning and psychological distress among community-dwelling older couples

ObjectivesThis study attempts to examine the association between stress induced by daily hassles, marital functioning and psychological distress among a sample of older couples living at home without assisted living facilities. Moreover, the study looks to assess the moderator role of marital functioning on the association between stress and psychological distress.MethodsThe study included a representative sample of 508 older couples living at home where at least one spouse was aged 65 years or older. To take into account of the non-independence of the data, dyadic analyses were conducted.ResultsFor men, marital functioning and stress induced by daily hassles explained the variance of psychological distress 4.71% and 2.56% respectively. For women, these variables explained 10.96% and 2.43% respectively of this variance. Results found also that marital functioning can play a protective role between the association of stress and psychological distress among men, but not for women. Men with lower marital functioning present a significant higher level of psychological distress when they present stress than those who do not have stress. For those with high marital functioning, no significant differences have been found on psychological distress between those groups.ConclusionStress induced by daily hassles and marital functioning are significantly related to psychological distress among older people, and, for men, marital functioning can play a protective role in the association between those variables.     

Profiles of adversity and resilience resources: A latent class analysis of two samples

Adversities refer to events that are characterized by perceived or actual threat to human functioning. Often considered deleterious for health and well-being, recent work supports an alternative picture of the effects of adversity on human functioning, such that a moderate amount of adversity – when compared with none or high levels – can be beneficial. We extend this body of work in the current study by considering the breadth or type of adversities experienced simultaneously (referred to as polyadversity), with a focus on individual profiles of lifetime adversities. Latent class analysis was employed to explore different configurations of lifetime adversity experiences in two independent samples and examine how these latent classes differed with regard to resilience resources (i.e., optimism, hope, self-efficacy, and bounce-back ability). University students (N = 348) and members from the broader community (N = 1,506) completed measures of lifetime adversity exposure and resilience resources. Three polyadversity classes were revealed in each sample, with both producing a high and a low polyadversity class. The third class differed between samples; in the student sample, this class represented experiences of vicarious adversity, whereas in the community sample, it represented moderate levels of exposure to adversity. Support for the adaptive nature of a moderate amount of adversity exposure was found in the community sample but not in the student sample. This study produces initial evidence of how lifetime adversity experiences group together and how class membership is related to resilience resources.     

Working memory capacity and mind-wandering during low-demand cognitive tasks

Individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) typically predict reduced rates of mind-wandering during laboratory tasks (Randall, Oswald, & Beier, 2014). However, some studies have shown a positive relationship between WMC and mind-wandering during particularly low-demand tasks (Levinson, Smallwood, & Davidson, 2012; Rummel & Boywitt, 2014; Zavagnin, Borella, & De Beni, 2014). More specifically, Baird, Smallwood, and Schooler (2011) found that when individuals with greater WMC do mind-wander, they tend entertain more future-oriented thoughts. This piece of evidence is frequently used to support the context-regulation hypothesis, which states that using spare capacity to think productively (e.g. plan) during relatively simple tasks is indicative of a cognitive system that is functioning in an adaptive manner (Smallwood & Andrews-Hanna, 2013). The present investigation failed to replicate the finding that WMC is positively related to future-oriented off-task thought, which has implications for several theoretical viewpoints.     

Inconsistent Responding in a Criminal Forensic Setting: An Evaluation of the VRIN-r and TRIN-r Scales of the MMPI–2–RF

Criminal forensic evaluations are complicated by the risk that examinees will respond in an unreliable manner. Unreliable responding could occur due to lack of personal investment in the evaluation, severe mental illness, and low cognitive abilities. In this study, 31% of Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2 Restructured Form (MMPI–2–RF; Ben-Porath & Tellegen, 2008/2011) profiles were invalid due to random or fixed-responding (T score ≥ 80 on the VRIN–r or TRIN–r scales) in a sample of pretrial criminal defendants evaluated in the context of treatment for competency restoration. Hierarchical regression models showed that symptom exaggeration variables, as measured by inconsistently reported psychiatric symptoms, contributed over and above education and intellectual functioning in their prediction of both random responding and fixed responding. Psychopathology variables, as measured by mood disturbance, better predicted fixed responding after controlling for estimates of cognitive abilities, but did not improve the prediction for random responding. These findings suggest that random responding and fixed responding are not only affected by education and intellectual functioning, but also by intentional exaggeration and aspects of psychopathology. Measures of intellectual functioning and effort and response style should be considered for administration in conjunction with self-report personality measures to rule out rival hypotheses of invalid profiles.     

Are DIT scores empirically distinct from measures of political identification and intellectual ability? A test using post‐9/11 data

Emler, Renwick, and Malone (1983) argued against a developmental interpretation of the Defining Issues Test (DIT), suggesting instead that it actually measures a social psychological phenomenon – political identification. On the other hand, Sanders, Lubinski, and Benbow (1995) have argued that DIT scores measure intellectual ability. In this study, we pitted the DIT against measures of political identification and intellectual ability in order to test its ability to incrementally predict variation in post‐9/11 attitudes. We found that both DIT‐2 scores and political identification were significant predictors of attitudes toward restricting human rights/civil liberties, while our index of intellectual ability (i.e. ACT scores) was not. DIT‐2 scores, political identification and intellectual ability each accounted for significant variation in attitudes toward President George W. Bush in our undergraduate college sample during the spring of 2004.     

The development of adaptive competence: Why cultural psychology is necessary and not just nice

I argue that developmental psychologists need to view cultural approaches to cognitive development as necessary and not just nice. Cultural psychology enables one to study problems one otherwise might not be able to study and also to identify solutions to problems that might be obscured or even distorted if one looked only at results within a single culture (usually, one’s own). I describe work my colleagues and I have done around the world addressing specific problems such as what does it mean to be adaptively intelligent in various cultures, how does illness affect intellectual functioning, and what do people even mean by “intelligence” in different cultures. The results show that cognitive development can be fully understood only if one looks beyond one’s own cultural boundaries and preconceptions. The article further argues that a theory of successful intelligence can be a useful way of studying phenomena of intellectual development within a cultural framework.     

Levels of interpersonal concerns and social functioning in early adolescent boys and girls

Previous research has shown that the Interpersonal Concerns factor of the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ; Blatt, D'Affliti, & Quinlan, 1976, 1979; Depressive Experiences Questionnaire for Adolescent [DEQ-A]; Blatt, Schaffer, Bers, & Quinlan, 1992) assesses 2 levels of interpersonal relatedness in young adults and older adolescents: neediness and relatedness. However, studies investigating the relation of the DEQ and DEQ-A with social functioning have not used the Neediness and Relatedness subscales of the Interpersonal Concerns factor. This study investigated (a) whether the Neediness and Relatedness subscales can be differentiated in a sample of early adolescents and (b) how the 2 subscales are differentially associated with indexes of social functioning. Results indicate that this differentiation of Neediness and Relatedness, and their associations with social functioning, emerges in early adolescence, especially for girls.     

Neuropsychological performance of emotionally disturbed students on the LNNB and LNNB-C

A number of researchers have reported an association between neuropsychological impairment and psychiatric disorders. However, there has been relatively little research on the neuropsychological functioning of emotionally disturbed students served in public schools. The purpose of this study was to determine the neuropsychological performance of 65 emotionally disturbed students 8–18 years old on the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery: Form I (LNNB) and the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery: Children's Revision (LNNB-C). The results indicated that approximately 42% of the younger group (99–154 months) and 38% of the older group (156– 226 months) demonstrated neuropsychological impairment as defined by criterion values for the various scales of the two batteries. On average, the emotionally disturbed students appeared to demonstrate more difficulty on more complex cognitive tasks, such as writing, arithmetic, and intellectual processes, than for less complex tasks, such as motor functions.     

Composite models never (well, hardly ever) compromise: reply to Schooler and Tanaka (1991)

With respect to the influence of postevent information, Schooler and Tanaka (1991) made a useful distinction between composite recollections--in which subjects retrieve "items from both the original and the postevent sources" (p.97)--and compromise recollections--in which subjects retrieve" at least one feature that cannot be exclusively associated with either the original or the postevent sources, but which reflects some compromise between [the] two" (p.97). Schooler and Tanaka argued that only the latter constitutes good evidence for blend-memory representations of the CHARM-type. As it turns out, Schooler and Tanaka's intuitions (and Metcalfe & Bjork's, initially) are faulty. Compromise recall--defined as a preference for an intervening alternative over either of the actually presented alternatives--is not normally a prediction of CHARM and may not be a prediction of composite-trace models in general. Only under specialized conditions--a systematic displacement of the test alternatives or a systematic shift attributable to assimilation to prior semantic knowledge--will computer simulations of CHARM produce unimodal compromise recollection. Equally surprising is the fact that separate-trace models, under a different set of conditions, can predict compromise recollection.     

Cumulative neurological factors associated with long-term outcomes in adult survivors of childhood brain tumors

Prior research has demonstrated the reliability and validity of the Neurological Predictor Scale (NPS) in relation to childhood brain tumor survivor outcomes; however, its use has not been examined in adult long-term survivors. The current study examines the concurrent validity of the NPS with long-term intellectual and adaptive outcomes in adult survivors of childhood brain tumors relative to individual variables alone. A total of 68 adult survivors of childhood brain tumors (M = 24 years old, SD = 4) almost 16 years post diagnosis (SD = 6) completed intellectual evaluations using the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI). Survivors’ adaptive functioning skills were assessed via informant structured clinical interviews (SIB-R). NPS scores were computed from data acquired from medical records. The NPS was significantly associated with intellectual (R² = 0.208, p < .05) and adaptive outcomes (R² = 0.30, p < .05) over and above individual risk factors. Approximately 18% of long-term survivors were identified as impaired in intellectual outcomes, and 29% were identified as impaired in adaptive functioning in everyday life skills. The NPS quantifies the cumulative effects of treatment and neurological sequelae experienced by both short- and long-term survivors of childhood brain tumors. It is a useful and easy measure to employ in clinical research that focuses on quantifying the neurological risk factors associated with long-term intellectual and adaptive functioning outcomes in adult survivors of childhood brain tumors.     

Self-reported depression in younger and older pregnant inner-city adolescents

Younger (14- to 17-year-old) inner-city adolescent mothers have been reported by Colletta (1983) as being more depressed than older (18- to 19-year-old) inner-city adolescent mothers. To determine whether this finding applies to pregnant adolescents, the revised Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979; Beck & Steer, 1987) was administered to 175 (65.1%) Black, 64 (23.8%) Hispanic, and 30 (11.1%) White inner-city adolescents during their 28th week of pregnancy. The sample was divided into 129 (48.0%) younger (13- to 15-year-old) adolescents and 140 (52.0%) older (16- to 18-year-old) adolescents. The mean profiles of the 21 BDI symptoms were comparable for both age groups, and it was concluded that younger and older pregnant inner-city adolescents describe similar levels of self-reported depression.     

Gender processes in school functioning and the mediating role of cognitive self-regulation

The catalysts for gender discrepancies across developmental outcomes are widely debated. This study examines cognitive self-regulation (CSR) as a mechanism for understanding gender differences in scholastic performance—both subjective school functioning and objective standardized achievement. Utilizing a national sample from the NICHD SECCYD (n = 1364), not only does CSR (i.e., attention and executive function) in 3rd grade mediate the relation between early mother–child interactions (at 54 months) and scholastic outcomes (in 5th grade), but it also predicts gender discrepancies favoring girls in grades, work persistence and socio-emotional development. Additional exploratory evidence suggests quality mother–child interactions may be more meaningful for girls' CSR; however, for boys, CSR is more predictive of school functioning. Both school functioning and standardized achievement were utilized in this study and highlight that gender differences in development and learning are nuanced and not readily discernible across all measures of scholastic performance. Implications for future research, intervention, and practice are discussed.