Psychological resilience, positive emotions, and successful adaptation to stress in later life

In 3 studies, the authors investigated the functional role of psychological resilience and positive emotions in the stress process. Studies 1a and 1b explored naturally occurring daily stressors. Study 2 examined data from a sample of recently bereaved widows. Across studies, multilevel random coefficient modeling analyses revealed that the occurrence of daily positive emotions serves to moderate stress reactivity and mediate stress recovery. Findings also indicated that differences in psychological resilience accounted for meaningful variation in daily emotional responses to stress. Higher levels of trait resilience predicted a weaker association between positive and negative emotions, particularly on days characterized by heightened stress. Finally, findings indicated that over time, the experience of positive emotions functions to assist high-resilient individuals in their ability to recover effectively from daily stress. Implications for research into protective factors that serve to inhibit the scope, severity, and diffusion of daily stressors in later adulthood are discussed.     

Social support as a predictor of variability: an examination of the adjustment trajectories of recent widows

The variability pattern of emotional well-being in recent widows across a 98-day period beginning in the first month post-loss has previously been modeled by dynamical systems and shown to be an oscillating process that damps across time. The goal of the present study was to examine how variables that comprise the social support network predict characteristics of these emotional shifts in 28 recent widows. In the present study, emotional support seeking led to a steeper overall trend, whereas perceived control for social support led to a shallower overall trend. When examining intraindividual variability, instrumental support seeking predicted a slower damping rate. Understanding the individual differences in the variability patterns of recent widows is a necessary step in identifying the etiology of adjustment to widowhood.     

A brief review on the use of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) for language imaging studies in human newborns and adults

Upon stimulation, real time maps of cortical hemodynamic responses can be obtained by non-invasive functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) which measures changes in oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin after positioning multiple sources and detectors over the human scalp. The current commercially available transportable fNIRS systems have a time resolution of 1-10 Hz, a depth sensitivity of about 1.5 cm, and a spatial resolution of about 1 cm. The goal of this brief review is to report infants, children and adults fNIRS language studies. Since 1998, 60 studies have been published on cortical activation in the brain’s classic language areas in children/adults as well as newborns using fNIRS instrumentations of different complexity. In addition, the basic principles of fNIRS including features, strengths, advantages, and limitations are summarized in terms that can be understood even by non specialists. Future prospects of fNIRS in the field of language processing imaging are highlighted.     

Benevolent ageism: Attitudes of overaccommodative behavior toward older women

ABSTRACT

Stereotypes of older adults fit a paternalistic pattern, including elevated warmth and lowered competence, yet little effort has been made to elucidate this in an everyday context. This phenomenon was examined with an experimental vignette, in which a woman was offered unnecessary help; specifically, the age (young vs. old) and the independence (accepting vs. declining assistance) of the woman were manipulated. Attributions from a college-age sample toward the woman were examined. In the older conditions, hypotheses were confirmed that participants approved overaccommodative behaviors, endorsed higher warmth and lower competence, and attitudes were modified when the older women contradicted the paternalistic stereotype by declining assistance. That is, competence was modifiable for older women, whereas warmth was not. Implications of these findings as possible evidence of benevolent ageism and the malleability of the Stereotype Content Model are discussed.