Factors predicting the use of technology: findings from the Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement (CREATE)

The successful adoption of technology is becoming increasingly important to functional independence. The present article reports findings from the Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement (CREATE) on the use of technology among community-dwelling adults. The sample included 1,204 individuals ranging in age from 18-91 years. All participants completed a battery that included measures of demographic characteristics, self-rated health, experience with technology, attitudes toward computers, and component cognitive abilities. Findings indicate that the older adults were less likely than younger adults to use technology in general, computers, and the World Wide Web. The results also indicate that computer anxiety, fluid intelligence, and crystallized intelligence were important predictors of the use of technology. The relationship between age and adoption of technology was mediated by cognitive abilities, computer self-efficacy, and computer anxiety. These findings are discussed in terms of training strategies to promote technology adoption.     

Deferred Interpretations: Why Starting Dickens is Taxing but Reading Dickens Isn't

Comprehenders often need to go beyond conventional word senses to obtain an appropriate interpretation of an expression. We report an experiment examining the processing of standard metonymies (The gentleman read Dickens) and logical metonymies (The gentleman began Dickens), contrasting both to the processing of control expressions with a conventional interpretation (The gentleman met Dickens). Eye movement measures during reading indicated that standard (producer-for-product) metonymies were not more costly to interpret than conventional expressions, but logical metonymies were more costly to interpret than both standard metonymies and conventional expressions. These results indicate that constructing alternative senses is sometimes taxing and that not all types of deferred interpretations are processed in the same way. The results suggest that a critical factor in determining the attendant cost of constructing alternative senses is whether compositional operations must generate unexpressed semantic structure to realize an extended sense of an expression.     

Visuospatial function in the beagle dog: an early marker of cognitive decline in a model of human aging and dementia

Visuospatial learning and memory impairments are an early marker for age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease. Similar to humans, aged dogs show visuospatial learning and memory deficits (). One hundred and nine beagle dogs ranging between 0.25 and 11.99 years were tested on a visuospatial delayed non-matching to position (DNMP) task to better characterize the progression of visuospatial deficits in the dog. Age predicted 48.2% of the variability in learning the DNMP, with dogs ranging from 1 to 11.99 years generally making more errors with increasing age. By contrast, puppies (<1 year) likely were showing developmental deficits, possibly due to an immature prefrontal cortex. Mild visuospatial deficits were detected by 6 years, which precedes the typical onset of amyloid-beta (Abeta) accumulation in the dog brain by two years, and can serve as an early marker for cognitive decline in the dog. These findings suggest that (1) age-related changes in visuospatial function in the dog models that seen in humans, further validating the dog as a model for human aging and dementia; and (2) other mechanisms, such as oxidative stress, soluble Abeta oligomers or cholinergic deficits, are likely contributing to the early impairment.     

Structural equation modeling with interchangeable dyads

Structural equation modeling (SEM) can be adapted in a relatively straightforward fashion to analyze data from interchangeable dyads (i.e., dyads in which the 2 members cannot be differentiated). The authors describe a general strategy for SEM model estimation, comparison, and fit assessment that can be used with either dyad-level or pairwise (double-entered) dyadic data. They present applications illustrating this approach with the actor-partner interdependence model, confirmatory factor analysis, and latent growth curve analysis.     

Weight and health status of inner city African American children: Perceptions of children and their parents

Poor socioeconomic status and African American (AA) ethnicity contribute to an increased risk of obesity for many inner city children. One hundred and forty six AA children and 108 AA parents attending an inner city health fair completed surveys regarding perceptions of their own (or their child's) weight and the impact of weight on health. The children were measured and their body mass indexes were calculated. Thirty-seven percent of the child respondents (n = 52) were at risk of overweight or overweight; of these, 67% perceived themselves as normal weight, and 77% thought their weight was healthy. Weighing more was felt to be healthy by 17% of children and 29% of parents. Of 39 parents whose children were at risk of overweight or overweight, 68% felt their child's weight was normal and 80% thought it was healthy. These results suggest that inner city AA children and their parents often do not recognize being overweight or the health implications of being overweight.     

Adolescents' perception of the ideal mate: its relationship to parental characteristics in intact and nonintact families

The relation of adolescents' experiencing parental divorce, their perception of parents' characteristics, and their perception of the ideal mate's characteristics was investigated. One hundred adolescents from intact families and 79 from nonintact families were asked to rank both the degree to which each of 40 personality traits characterized their parents and the degree to which each characterized an ideal partner. The results indicated that there was no significant difference between adolescents from intact and nonintact families in the independence of their characterizations of their ideal mate and of their parents. However, differences were found on some of the personality dimensions that were investigated. These and other findings are discussed within the framework of psychoanalytic theory.     

Comparison of behavioral and cognitive-behavioral one-session exposure treatments for small animal phobias

This study evaluated the efficacy of behavioral and cognitive-behavioral one-session exposure treatment procedures with and without programmed generalization for participants with small animal phobias. Forty participants were randomly assigned to the treatment and generalization conditions. Both treatments produced significant improvements from pre-test to post-test and these results were maintained for 1 year. The treatment effect sizes ranged from large to very large across behavioral, self-report, and subjectively rated measures. Participants in the behavioral treatment condition reported that the treatment was significantly more intrusive than participants in the cognitive-behavioral treatment group. The programmed generalization condition did not produce additional measured benefit. The results are discussed in terms of the overall effectiveness of one-session exposure treatment components for small animal phobias.     

Regulatory fit and persuasion: transfer from "Feeling Right."

The authors propose that when a message recipient "feels right" from regulatory fit (E. T. Higgins, 2000), this subjective experience transfers to the persuasion context and serves as information for relevant evaluations, including perceived message persuasiveness and opinions of the topic. Fit was induced either by strategic framing of message arguments in a way that fit/did not fit with the recipient's regulatory state or by a source unrelated to the message itself. Across 4 studies, regulatory fit enhanced perceived persuasiveness and opinion ratings. These effects were eliminated when the correct source of feeling right was made salient before message exposure, supporting the misattribution account. These effects reversed when message-related thoughts were negative, supporting the claim that fit provides information about the "rightness" of one's (positive or negative) evaluations.