Aging and memory for expected and unexpected objects in real-world settings.

Adult age differences in the consistency effect were examined in 3 experiments. The consistency effect refers to items inconsistent with expectations being better remembered than items consistent with expectations. Younger and older adults walked into an office room and viewed objects that varied in their consistency with expectation. Immediate and delayed recognition tests on item information (i.e., distractors were defined by their semantic identity) revealed that both age groups recognized unexpected items better than expected items. However, when recognition of token information was requested (i.e., distractors were defined by their physical appearance), younger adults, in contrast to older adults, exhibited consistency effects. Also, under divided attention, young adults revealed the same pattern of data as did elderly adults under full attention. The results are discussed in terms of capacity-related differences in distinctive encoding.     

No Evidence of Suicide Increase Following Terrorist Attacks in the United States: An Interrupted Time‐Series Analysis of September 11 and Oklahoma City

There is substantial evidence of detrimental psychological sequelae following disasters, including terrorist attacks. The effect of these events on extreme responses such as suicide, however, is unclear. We tested competing hypotheses about such effects by employing autoregressive integrated moving average techniques to model the impact of September 11 and the Oklahoma City bombing on monthly suicide counts at the local, state, and national level. Unlike prior studies that provided conflicting evidence, rigorous time series techniques revealed no support for an increase or decrease in suicides following these events. We conclude that while terrorist attacks produce subsequent psychological morbidity and may affect self and collective efficacy well beyond their immediate impact, these effects are not strong enough to influence levels of suicide mortality.     

Cognitive Tendencies in Analogical Forecasting1

This article attempts to identify some cognitive tendencies involved in analogical forecasting of the outcomes of medical treatment. Sixty-one medical doctors were involved in two experimental tasks concerned with prediction of the outcomes of a new medical treatment when the result with a first patient was known to be either negative or positive. The same subjects were also tested by the Short Optimism/Pessimism Questionnaire (SO/PQ) to explore relationships between life attitude and the cognitive tendencies observed in the experiment. The following findings were reported: (1) The first step of forecasting was recognized as a Data Evaluation Process (DEP), where the physician decides if the given data are sufficient to forecast the result of the same treatment with a new patient. (2) Two cognitive tendencies were identified: non-data-suggested tendency—drawing a conclusion opposite to the data given; and data-suggested tendency—drawing an optimistic conclusion when forecasting from “positive” data and a pessimistic conclusion when forecasting from “negative” data. The second tendency appeared to be dominant; however, the “positive” data created a stronger atmosphere to draw conclusions on a negative outcome. (3) It was stated that analogical forecasting involves two integrated processes, i.e., concluding and asserting. If the integration process is not complete, the subject is drawing analogical conclusions with a low confidence. (4) An optimistic life attitude appeared to be an important factor in determining analogical forecasting.     

Age-related changes in working and reference memory performance and locomotor activity in the Wistar rat

Wistar rats of three age groups were tested in an automated tunnel-maze system of variable geometry to investigate whether changes in spontaneous locomotor activity and in learning and memory develop differentially or in a correlated fashion as a function of age. Senescent (30 months) as well as mature-adult (17 months) rats showed an age-correlated decline of locomotor activity as compared to the mature-young (5 months) group. Both working-memory (measured as within-trial arm discrimination performance) and reference-memory (measured as avoidance of "blind alley" visits) were severely affected in the senescent group, whereas the middle-aged animals suffered only from a working-memory deficit. The findings provide evidence that locomotor deficits do not necessarily interfere in the assessment of age-related changes in cognitive performance. Furthermore the results support the hypothesis that working and reference memory have different underlying physiological correlates and that these neuronal systems are differentially affected by the aging process.