Aging,Identity, and Women: Constructing the Third Age

The “Third Age” offers a conceptualization of the lives of those who are retired and beyond middle age but not facing any disability stereotypically associated with the “old.” Emphasizing good health, freedom from the responsibilities of younger adulthood, and continuing engagement with the world, it articulates a specific form of positive aging that has received very little attention within psychology. We adopted a feminist and critical discursive approach in exploring how eight women, who fit the Third Age profile, understand their lives and who they are. Audiotaped semi-structured interviews were transcribed and analyzed. The participants drew on four pairs of interpretative repertoires in constructing the meanings of aging. Their identity work involved positioning themselves as “not old” and establishing continuity between who they have been in the past and who they are now. The results highlight the women’s agency as they negotiated between the discursive resources available to them. Drawing on a framework for feminist therapy that incorporates an emphasis on social change, we discuss the implications of these results.     

A longitudinal investigation of children internationally adopted at school age

Most existing research on children adopted internationally has focused on those adopted as infants and toddlers. The current study longitudinally tracked several outcomes, including cognitive, behavioral, emotional, attachment, and family functioning, in 25 children who had been internationally adopted at school age (M = 7.7 years old at adoption, SD = 3.4, range = 4–15 years). We examined the incidence of clinically significant impairments, significant change in outcomes over the three study points, and variables that predicted outcomes over time. Clinically significant impairments in sustained attention, full-scale intelligence, reading, language, executive functioning, externalizing problems, and parenting stress were common, with language and executive functioning impairments present at higher levels in the current study compared with past research focusing on children adopted as infants and toddlers. Over the three study points, significant improvements across most cognitive areas and attachment functioning were observed, though significant worsening in executive functioning and internalizing problems was present. Adoptive family-specific variables, such as greater maternal education, smaller family size, a parenting approach that encouraged age-expected behaviors, home schooling, and being the sole adopted child in the family were associated with greater improvement across several cognitive outcomes. In contrast, decreased parenting stress was predicted by having multiple adopted children and smaller family sizes were associated with greater difficulties with executive functioning. Child-specific variables were also linked to outcomes, with girls displaying worse attachment and poorer cognitive performance and with less time in orphanage care resulting in greater adoption success. Implications for future research and clinical applications are discussed.     

Is more choice always worse? Age differences in the overchoice effect

Current research on the overchoice effect has been mainly conducted from an adult point of view and with adult subjects. This study investigates whether children, adolescents, and seniors suffer the same negative consequences as adults when facing an overabundance of choice. Findings showed that the overchoice effect did not equally extend to all age groups. While adolescents were affected by the phenomenon in a very similar way as adults, children and seniors suffered fewer negative consequences of an overabundance of choice. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

中国国民心理健康素养的现状与特点

本研究以系统的全国抽样调查方式, 了解我国国民心理健康素养现状。结果显示, 我国成年公众的心理健康素养总体处于中偏低水平; 其发展水平在地域、人口学分布上比较均衡; 在结构上, 公众心理健康素养的发展表现出心理健康维护和促进的素养高于心理疾病应对的素养, 自助的素养高于助人的素养两个特点。调查还发现, 个体心理健康素养中, 知识观念部分个体差异较大, 态度和习惯部分个体差异较小; 在心理健康素养的社会性影响因素方面, 社会经济地位是所考察变量中效应最大的因素, 且其对素养的知识观念方面影响较大, 对素养的态度习惯方面影响较小。调查结果提示, 要充分认识心理健康素养提升任务的艰巨性; 在实践策略上, 宜以提升心理疾病应对的素养作为当前的工作重点和突破口。     

Exploring predictors of change in behavioral problems over a 1-year period in preterm born preschoolers

ObjectiveAlthough predictors of the prevalence of behavioral problems in preterm-born children have been frequently studied, predictors of behavioral change in these children remain unknown. Therefore, in this study we explore predictors of short-term changes in problem behavior in preterm-born preschoolers, an age period characterized by rapid behavioral change.MethodTwo- to 5-year-old children born with a gestational age <32 weeks and/or birth weight <1500 g were eligible, because of their high risk for behavioral problems. Following screening, 59 children with a t-score ≥60 on either the internal, external or total problem scale of the Child Behavior Checklist were included in the study. Linear mixed modeling was used to investigate predictors of change in behavior over a 1-year period.ResultsHigher levels of parenting stress, parent perceived child vulnerability, and parental hostility towards the child and lower educational levels of the mother significantly predicted increases in externalizing behavior. The higher the age of the child, the more internalizing problems decreased.ConclusionsParenting stress, parent perceived child vulnerability and parental hostility towards the child were the only modifiable predictors of increases in externalizing behavior, whilst no modifiable predictors of internalizing behavior were found. There may be a reciprocal interaction between stress in parents and child externalizing problems. Furthermore, stress and worries may directly influence parents’ reports on behavioral measures, because it could cause them to be concerned by behavior otherwise perceived as normal. Therefore, future interventions for parents of preterm-born children should primarily address parental stress and concerns regarding their child.     

The effect of perceived control on self-reported cardiovascular disease incidence across adulthood and old age

Objective: To examine whether rates of change in perceived control are predictive of cardiovascular disease (CVD) incidence across adulthood and old age.

Design: We used the PATH Through Life Project (n = 7103, M = 40, SD = 16; 52% women), a longitudinal panel survey that encompasses three cohorts at Time 1, ages 20–24, 40–44 and 60–64, who have been assessed three times at four-year intervals.

Method: We examined whether rates of change in perceived control were associated with CVD incidence over 8 years of time, over and above that of baseline levels of perceived control and known risk factors for CVD.

Main Outcome Measures: Self-reported CVD incidence.

Results: Increases in perceived control over time were associated with decreased likelihood of 8-year incidence of CVD and these effects were independent of socio-demographics, covariates and baseline levels of perceived control. The effects were consistent across young adulthood, midlife and old age and for men and women.

Conclusions: Findings demonstrate the importance of changes in perceived control as a predictor of CVD incidence across adulthood and old age. We suggest future research using mediation analysis to test reverse causality and mechanisms underlying the effects of perceived control on CVD incidence.     

Age differences in vocal emotion perception: on the role of speaker age and listener sex

Older adults have greater difficulty than younger adults perceiving vocal emotions. To better characterise this effect, we explored its relation to age differences in sensory, cognitive and emotional functioning. Additionally, we examined the role of speaker age and listener sex. Participants (N?=?163) aged 19–34 years and 60–85 years categorised neutral sentences spoken by ten younger and ten older speakers with a happy, neutral, sad, or angry voice. Acoustic analyses indicated that expressions from younger and older speakers denoted the intended emotion with similar accuracy. As expected, younger participants outperformed older participants and this effect was statistically mediated by an age-related decline in both optimism and working-memory. Additionally, age differences in emotion perception were larger for younger as compared to older speakers and a better perception of younger as compared to older speakers was greater in younger as compared to older participants. Last, a female perception benefit was less pervasive in the older than the younger group. Together, these findings suggest that the role of age for emotion perception is multi-faceted. It is linked to emotional and cognitive change, to processing biases that benefit young and own-age expressions, and to the different aptitudes of women and men.     

Differential aversive learning enhances orientation discrimination

A number of recent studies have documented rapid changes in behavioural sensory acuity induced by aversive learning in the olfactory and auditory modalities. The effect of aversive learning on the discrimination of low-level features in the visual system of humans remains unclear. Here, we used a psychophysical staircase procedure to estimate discrimination thresholds for oriented grating stimuli, before and after differential aversive learning. We discovered that when a target grating orientation was conditioned with an aversive loud noise, it subsequently led to an improvement of discrimination acuity in nearly all subjects. However, no such change was observed in a control group conditioned to an orientation shifted by ±90° from the target. Our findings cannot be explained by contextual learning or sensitisation factors. The results converge with those reported in the olfactory modality and provide further evidence that early sensory systems can be rapidly modified by recently experienced reinforcement histories.     

The effect of familiarity on within-person age judgements from voices

Listeners can perceive a person’s age from their voice with above chance accuracy. Studies have usually established this by asking listeners to directly estimate the age of unfamiliar voices. The recordings used mostly include cross-sectional samples of voices, including people of different ages to cover the age range of interest. Such cross-sectional samples likely include not only cues to age in the sound of the voice but also socio-phonetic cues, encoded in how a person speaks. How age perpcetion accuracy is affected when minimizing socio-phonetic cues by sampling the same voice at different time points remains largely unknown. Similarly, with the voices in age perception studies being usually unfamiliar to listeners, it is unclear how familiarity with a voice affects age perception. We asked listeners who were either familiar or unfamiliar with a set of four voices to complete an age discrimination task: listeners heard two recordings of the same person’s voice, recorded 15 years apart, and were asked to indicate in which recording the person was younger. Accuracy for both familiar and unfamiliar listeners was above chance. While familiarity advantages were apparent, accuracy was not particularly high: familiar and unfamiliar listeners were correct for 68.2% and 62.7% of trials, respectively (chance = 50%). Familiarity furthermore interacted with the voices included. Overall, our findings indicate that age perception from voices is not a trivial task at all times – even when listeners are familiar with a voice. We discuss our findings in the light of how reliable voice may be as a signal for age.