Plato's Theory of Aging

Plato's writings express a positive attitude toward elderly people. But do his writings also show a serious theoretical interest in issues of aging? We approach this question by comparing what Plato says about aging to major theoretical issues in gerontology. We argue that many of Plato's subtler observations of the behavior of elderly people and many of his ideas about aging anticipate specific research and theoretical advances in contemporary gerontology. We compare passages in Plato's works to the debate between activity and disengagement theories, the concepts of continuity and gerotranscendence, Robert Butler's discovery of “the life review,” and recent theories of old age wisdom. Plato's anticipation of these ideas and issues related to them suggests that his writings may contain still other major insights into aging which are not yet articulated in gerontology. We suggest three possibilities.     

Attributional Retraining: A Motivation Treatment With Differential Psychosocial and Performance Benefits for Failure Prone Individuals in Competitive Achievement Settings

Our quasi-experimental, longitudinal treatment study examined whether Attributional Retraining (AR) facilitated adjustment among young adults (n = 324) making the challenging school-to-university transition. An AR by performance orientation group 2 × 4 design showed AR primarily benefited high-risk students: Failure-ruminators (high failure preoccupation, low perceived control) receiving AR reported higher intrinsic motivation and more adaptive attribution-related emotions than their no-AR peers. Failure-acceptors (low failure preoccupation, low perceived control) receiving AR had higher intrinsic motivation, higher grade point averages, and fewer course withdrawals than their no-AR counterparts. Thus, AR had differential benefits (emotions, achievement) for vulnerable students who were psychologically distinct.     

Book review

Becker, J.B., Breedlove, S.M., & Crews, D. (Eds.) (1991). Behavioral endocrinology. Cambridge, MA & London: MIT Press. Pp. xxvi + 574. ISBN 0-262-02342-3. £31.50 (Pbk).     

Recoding processes in recognition: Some effects of presentation rate

Character classification time was studied in a situation in which Ss sometimes had to decide whether a probe item was a translation of a remembered item according to a previously learned translation scheme. When translation between probe and remembered items was necessary, the rate at which the to-be-remembered items had been presented affected the form of the memory-scanning functions. This result seemed to contradict Cruse and Clifton’s (1973) hypothesis that Ss translated all remembered items into the form of the probe after the probe was presented. An alternative model claimed that, when time permits, Ss translate to-be-remembered items into their alternate form at the time of presentation and scan the resulting translated items at a relatively slow rate if the probe matches them in form. If Ss are unable to translate the to-be-remembered items when they are presented, they resort to the strategy of translating the probe item into the form in which the remembered items had been presented.