The role of adolescent IQ and gender in the use of cognitive support for remembering in aging

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of adolescent IQ (AIQ) and gender in older adults' ability to use cognitive support to enhance memory. Subjects were 269 mid-1940s graduates of the same high school. Adolescent IQ scores were gathered from archives, and subjects' memory for words was tested with tasks that provided increasing cognitive support. Overall, subjects benefited from support; women recalled more words than men; and persons with a high AIQ remembered more words than persons with a lower AIQ. However, while all subjects showed gains from cognitive support, men with a lower AIQ performed worse than men with a high AIQ. Women's performance was not dependent on their AIQ. Analysis of qualitative memory indicators suggested that women and persons with a high AIQ had better encoding and retrieval operations. Men with a lower AIQ appear to be particularly vulnerable to memory deficits in aging. This may be due to low "cognitive reserve" or generally poorer episodic memory function.     

A multitrait-multimethod validation of the Implicit Association Test: implicit and explicit attitudes are related but distinct constructs

Recent theoretical and methodological innovations suggest a distinction between implicit and explicit evaluations. We applied Campbell and Fiske's (1959) classic multitrait-multimethod design precepts to test the construct validity of implicit attitudes as measured by the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Participants (N = 287) were measured on both self-report and IAT for up to seven attitude domains. Through a sequence of latent-variable structural models, systematic method variance was distinguished from attitude variance, and a correlated two-factors-per-attitude model (implicit and explicit factors) was superior to a single-factor-per-attitude specification. That is, despite sometimes strong relations between implicit and explicit attitude factors, collapsing their indicators into a single attitude factor resulted in relatively inferior model fit. We conclude that these implicit and explicit measures assess related but distinct attitude constructs. This provides a basis for, but does not distinguish between, dual-process and dual-representation theories that account for the distinctions between constructs.     

Development of prehension between 5 and 10 years of age: distance scaling, grip aperture, and sight of the hand

The authors investigated whether 5- to 10-year-old children (N = 75) differ from adults (N = 12) in the developmental course of distance scaling and the adaptations to the inability to see the hand during prehension movements. The children reached under a surface and grasped and lifted an object suspended through it. All children scaled velocity appropriately for movement distance, both with and without sight of the hand. However, 5- to 6-year-old children did not increase grip aperture with increased distance, whereas older children and adults did. The older children and adults spent longer after peak deceleration when they could not see the hand, and maximum grip aperture (MGA) was larger, providing an increased safety margin. Children aged 5 to 6 spent the same amount of time between peak deceleration and grasp, whether or not they could see the hand, and they failed to increase MGA when they could not see the hand. Prehension in the younger children differed from that of older children in two ways: The younger children did not integrate reach and grasp over different distances and did not use visual information about hand position to optimize accuracy.     

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Volume Contents     

Cooling blocks ITM and LTM formation and preserves memory

In Lymnaea aerial respiratory behaviour can be operantly conditioned; snails learn not to perform this behaviour. Depending on the training procedure used, snails are competent to form either intermediate-term (ITM; lasting 1-3 h) or long-term (LTM; >4 h) memory. We found that cooling the snails for 1 h immediately after training was sufficient to block either ITM or LTM. Cooling snails for a similar period 10 or 15 min after cessation of training, failed to block ITM and LTM formation, respectively. Finally, we employed the cooling technique to extend both ITM and LTM. That is, cooling could prevent forgetting. Cooling extended LTM that normally persisted for 2 days to at least 8 days. These data are consistent with the hypothesis that forgetting is due to the learning and remembering of interfering events, and thus is an active process.     

Intraindividual coupling of daily stress and cognition

Most psychological theories predict associations among processes that transpire within individuals. However, these theories are often tested by examining relationships at the between-persons (BP) rather than the within-persons (WP) level. The authors examined the WP and BP relationships between daily stress and daily variability in cognitive performance. Daily stress and cognitive performance were assessed on 6 occasions in 108 older adults and 68 young adults. WP variability in stress predicted WP variability in response times (RTs) on a 2-back working memory task in both younger and older adults. That is, RTs were slower on high-stress days compared with low-stress days. There was evidence of an amplified WP stress effect in the older adults on a serial attention task. There was no evidence of stress effects on simple versions of these tasks that placed minimal demands on working memory. These results are consistent with theories that postulate that stress-related cognitive interference competes for attentional resources.     

Anxiety-linked expectancy bias across the adult lifespan

Anxiety is characterised by a negative expectancy bias, such that anxious individuals report negatively distorted expectations about the future. Contrary to anxiety, ageing is characterised by a positivity effect, such that ageing is associated with a tendency to attend to and remember positive information, relative to negative information. The current study integrates these literatures to examine anxiety- and age-linked biases when thinking about the future. Participants (N=1,109) completed a procedure that involved reading valenced scenarios (positive, negative, or ambiguous) and then rating the likelihood of future valenced events occurring. Results suggest that ageing and anxiety have independent and opposing effects. Heightened anxiety was associated with a reduced expectancy for positive events, regardless of the scenarios’ current emotional valence, whereas increased age was associated with an inflated expectancy for positive events, which was strongest when individuals were processing socially relevant or negative scenarios.     

The Role of Adolescent IQ and Gender in the Use of Cognitive Support for Remembering in Aging

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of adolescent IQ (AIQ) and gender in older adults' ability to use cognitive support to enhance memory. Subjects were 269 mid-1940s graduates of the same high school. Adolescent IQ scores were gathered from archives, and subjects' memory for words was tested with tasks that provided increasing cognitive support. Overall, subjects benefited from support; women recalled more words than men; and persons with a high AIQ remembered more words than persons with a lower AIQ. However, while all subjects showed gains from cognitive support, men with a lower AIQ performed worse than men with a high AIQ. Women's performance was not dependent on their AIQ. Analysis of qualitative memory indicators suggested that women and persons with a high AIQ had better encoding and retrieval operations. Men with a lower AIQ appear to be particularly vulnerable to memory deficits in aging. This may be due to low “cognitive reserve” or generally poorer episodic memory function.     

Stress and Disease: A Structural and Functional Analysis

Chronic stress, a validated health risk factor, remains an ambiguous construct in spite of years of research. We propose that chronic stress is best understood as a series of acute stress responses, and that these responses become maladaptive when they occur frequently or are of long duration. We focus on the factors that contribute to chronic stress: whether the presence of a stressor, real or imagined, is long‐lived and/or frequent (repeated activation), the degree to which the stressor is perceived as a threat even when no longer present (low or slow adaptation), and the extent to which the duration of responding is prolonged (delayed or failure to return to homeostasis). Importantly, we examine how perseverative cognitions (such as rumination and worry) contribute to chronic stress by creating and sustaining acute stress responses, largely via influencing activation, adaptation, and return to homeostasis. Finally, we discuss the implications of our stress model: that interventions can be ideographically tailored to address how an individual is experiencing chronic stress; that researchers may be better able to identify specific characteristics of chronic stress that relate most strongly to poor health; and that moderators of chronic stress may function through these contributing factors rather than via general effects on the system.     

The effect of tape-recorded relaxation training on well-being,symptoms, and peak expiratory flow rate in adult asthmatics: A pilot study

Abstract

Evidence indicates that psychological stress plays a role in precipitating and exacerbating asthma symptoms and suggests that relaxation techniques aimed at reducing stress and autonomic arousal leads to symptom reduction. This study explored the effect of a tape-recorded relaxation intervention on well-being (mood and stresson). asthma symptoms, and a measure of pulmonary function (PEFR). Twenty adult asthmatics were studied for 21 days in their natural environment using a multiple baseline design. Self-administered relaxation training (including both breathing exercises and muscle relaxation) led to decreased negative mood and stressor report. Reporting of asthma symptoms decreased over time, and PEFR was increased by relaxation training. Asthma medication use was unchanged. Results suggest that tape–recorded relaxation training positively impacts well-being, asthma symptoms. and PEFR in a naturalistic setting. Further study of the potential use of inexpensive tape-recorded interventions in chronic illness is warranted.