Psychology and Aging最新文献

Research has shown that older adults who rate their health and energy more positively have better health outcomes. However, the mechanisms underlying this relationship have not been formally tested, especially in a long-term longitudinal, full adult lifespan sample. We used data from the Midlife in the United States study to investigate whether outlooks regarding one's health and energy assessed at Wave 1 would be associated with health outcomes (health limitations, chronic conditions) 20 years later at Wave 3. At Wave 1, participants were asked to rate their past (10 years prior) and future (10 years hence) health and energy on a scale from 0 to 10. To determine outlook, we computed a difference score by subtracting participants' past rating from their future rating. We found that health and energy outlook was negatively associated with residual change in health at Wave 3, such that those with more positive outlooks experienced fewer increases in health limitations over time. Participant age and sex did not interact with this relationship, but education did, suggesting a positive health outlook may be more important for those with lower levels of education. Mediation analysis revealed that positive health behaviors (more frequent physical activity, less smoking) partially mediated the relationship between positive outlook and better health outcomes. Finally, a positive energy outlook was associated with a 6% decrease in mortality risk before accounting for baseline health. We discuss factors that appear to underlie the relationship between health/energy outlook and future health outcomes and consider implications for interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Interruptions are widespread in working life and increase the risk of errors. Older adults are usually more affected than younger ones, which is attributed to age-related changes in the cognitive processes needed to cope with interruptions, especially with respect to attentional control and working memory. Here, we investigated whether the benefits of prolonged or self-determined timing when dealing with interruptions, which we found in a previous study, become more pronounced with age. Twenty-eight younger (18-30 years) and 31 older participants (55-70 years) performed a retrospective cue (retro-cue)-based working memory task, in which the orientations of a set of colored bars had to be remembered and retrieved in response to a retro-cue. This primary task was randomly interrupted with an arithmetic task presented before the retro-cue, with the time after the interruption and before the retro-cue being either short (500 ms), long (1,500 ms), or self-determined. Interruptions impaired performance, and the older group performed overall worse than the younger group. Especially the older group benefited from that flexibility, which led to an improvement in performance up to the level of the younger group. Accordingly, the electroencephalography in the flexible condition showed an equally strong α activity in both groups at the time of the retro-cue, suggesting an improvement in the retrieval of task-relevant information from working memory. Overall, the study shows that in work situations in which interruptions cannot be avoided, flexibility in resumption following these interruptions can help older employees to compensate for age-related changes in cognitive abilities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Self-directed ageism refers to the many ways in which ageist beliefs become increasingly self-relevant and internalized. Despite extensive literature documenting the harmful effects of self-directed ageism on cognition, it remains to be established whether two core domains of self-directed ageism (ageist beliefs and personal views of one's own aging) independently, but also potentially interactively, influence prospective memory function. Accordingly, the present study was designed to test these relationships. One hundred eighty-three adults aged 41-85 years participated in this study (M_age = 63.84; 46.45% female). Participants completed both self-report and real-world behavioral indicators of prospective memory ability, alongside measures of ageist beliefs and personal views of one's own aging. Hierarchical regressions revealed differential effects of self-directed ageism (after controlling for demographic covariates), such that more negative ageist beliefs and more positive personal views of aging uniquely (but not interactively) predicted objective prospective memory function. Notably, only more positive personal views of aging emerged as a unique predictor of subjective prospective memory function. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how self-directed ageism affects cognitive functioning, highlighting the complex nature of this relationship and the need to consider self-directed ageism at the subdomain level. Given the critical role of prospective memory in maintaining autonomy and everyday functioning, these findings have important implications for clinical practice and future research aimed at improving quality of life in late adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Older adults often exhibit reduced performance in visual search tasks and more exploitation in foraging tasks. Target-distractor similarity-a common difficulty manipulation in visual search-can offer insight into age-related differences in visual attention and foraging strategies. However, this manipulation has rarely been assessed with categorical information or been implemented in foraging tasks, which could enhance the ecological validity of such paradigms. This study investigated age-related differences in a foraging task using a categorical target-distractor similarity manipulation. Younger adults (aged 18-35 years, n = 65) and older adults (aged 55-80 years, n = 66) without cognitive impairment completed an online foraging task, where they searched for multiple target objects belonging to a specific category (e.g., "bed") among distractors from either high similarity categories (e.g., "furniture") or low similarity categories (e.g., "clothes"). Older participants were generally slower, collected fewer targets, and showed less search efficiency in the high similarity condition. However, both age groups demonstrated similar foraging strategies, showing slightly more exploitation in the high similarity condition. Target-distractor similarity appeared to increase demands on attentional control, especially for older participants. Nonetheless, exploration-exploitation behavior was less affected, suggesting that older participants attempted to mitigate the cognitive demands of target-distractor similarity by strategies such as collecting fewer targets. These findings indicate age-related differences in categorical search and highlight how older adults can adapt to increased cognitive control demands to maintain optimal foraging behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Subjective age-the age people feel-fluctuates considerably across days and even within days. We investigated how subjective age fluctuations are intertwined with experiences of momentary pain and how the within-person couplings of subjective age and pain are shaped by long-term changes in physical health using data from 139 older individuals participating in the Berlin Aging Study II (age 67-88, 41.3% women). After providing long-term longitudinal data across on average 7 years on central facets of physical health (pain severity, pain interference, chronic diseases) study participants completed repeated daily-life assessments of subjective age and pain up to six times per day across one full week. Results from dynamic structural equation models that combine latent change score models with location scale models of intraindividual variability indicate that in moments when individuals report pain that is 10 points above their overall average pain (on a scale from 0 = no pain to 100 = most intense pain), they feel a third of a year older than their average subjective age. Individuals who experienced steeper long-term 7-year increases in both pain severity and pain interference exhibited a stronger subjective age reactivity to momentary pain (i.e., within-person couplings of elevated momentary pain with an older subjective age) and greater subjective age systemic noise (i.e., nonpain-related momentary fluctuations in subjective age). Our findings suggest that moment-to-moment fluctuations in older adults' subjective age in daily life are shaped both by moment-to-moment fluctuations in pain and cumulative long-term physical health trajectories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Work is one major developmental context in adulthood, as most adults spend considerable time at work. Retirement causes extensive changes in social contexts, daily routines, and individuals' identity. Little is known about how work characteristics are associated with personality trajectories, especially during the retirement transition. In the present study, we examined associations between changes in Big Five personality traits during the retirement transition and work environment characteristics (autonomy, skill discretion, and demands) as well as work effort. Based on three-wave longitudinal data from the Midlife in the United States study, we identified n = 286 adults (50-77 years, M = 57.83, SD = 5.00; 51% women), who retired during the study period, and a control group who did not retire (n = 260, 50-71 years, M = 54.28, SD = 3.82; 54% women). We analyzed data using latent change score models. The measurement model for conscientiousness was not time-invariant, therefore mean differences could not be analyzed. Significant mean-level decreases were found for neuroticism in both groups and for openness in retirees. There were only few significant associations between preretirement work characteristics and personality change: In retirees, higher preretirement skill discretion was associated with greater neuroticism decline and higher autonomy with less openness decline. In nonretirees, higher autonomy was associated with greater decline in extraversion. These findings suggest that work characteristics are not a major influence on personality trait changes during the retirement transition. Possible explanations and research desiderata concerning personality development in the context of retirement are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Previous studies have produced inconsistent findings regarding whether age-related declines in emotion perception affect various verbal and nonverbal channels to the same extent and whether they are linked to cognitive ability. This study systematically explored age-related differences in multisensory emotional speech perception and their associations with overall cognitive functioning. Thirty-three older adults (22 females) and 32 young adults (22 females) completed two Stroop-like tests examining the perceptual salience of verbal semantics, vocal prosody, and facial expressions. The cross-channel auditory Stroop-like test contrasted semantics with prosody, while the cross-modal Stroop-like test further incorporated visual facial expressions to examine the salience patterns among all three channels. Participants selectively attended to emotional information from one sensory channel while ignoring congruent or incongruent cues from others. Overall, older adults demonstrated reduced ability in multisensory emotional speech perception with greater preferences for congruent information across channels compared to young adults. In addition, they displayed perceptual salience of semantics over prosody, whereas young adults leaned toward prosody in both Stroop-like tests. Despite these age-related shifts in channel salience for the two auditory channels, both groups prioritized visual facial expressions over prosodic and semantic cues during audiovisual processing. These salience patterns were particularly pronounced under incongruent conditions, which had significant associations with overall cognitive capacities of the older adults. Together, these findings delineate how individual differences in age and cognition shape Stroop effects in multisensory emotional speech perception, with complex interplay between channel asymmetry and information congruity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

As people get older, they often exhibit a relative preference for positive over negative information in attention, a phenomenon known as the positivity effect. Although this effect is well-documented, prior studies have typically required participants to view experimenter-selected stimuli. In daily life, however, people often choose their own emotional inputs, and these choices can be shaped by psychological inertia and status quo biases. Because psychological inertia increases with age, we tested how the presence of default options influences positivity effects. Across two studies (final Ns = 82 and 181), younger and older adults completed a proactive choice task where each trial began with a default image (negative, neutral, or positive). Participants could do nothing and continue viewing this default or press a key to switch to a known alternative (e.g., switch from negative to neutral). Older adults were more likely than younger adults to continue viewing defaults, regardless of valence. When defaults were positive, this produced an age-related positivity bias, with older adults viewing comparatively more positive images. Conversely, when defaults were negative, there was an age-related negativity bias, with older adults viewing comparatively more negative images. When defaults were neutral, older adults were less likely than younger adults to seek out negative or positive alternatives. Study 2 included a manipulation designed to reduce psychological inertia, and while this increased switching, older adults continued to stick with defaults more often than younger adults. These findings highlight the contextual nature of positivity effects, showing they vary with the default environment's valence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

This article commemorates the 40th anniversary of the publication of Psychology and Aging, the premier journal for basic and applied psychological research on aging and adult lifespan development, published by the American Psychological Association. To this end, we summarize the journal's history based on the editorials of previous editors, and we highlight the continuity in the journal's mission (especially with regard to high standards for scientific rigor, as well as openness to new content, understudied populations, and innovative methods), its increasing impact, and the great diversity of topics addressed in the last four decades. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Lifetime social engagement could build cognitive reserve and lower the risk of dementia through compensatory effects on brain health. We aimed to investigate whether social interaction at work is protective of later-life cognitive impairment. Data from 9,248 participants of the population-based Norwegian HUNT4 70+ Study (2017-2019), with cognitive assessments at or after age 70, were linked retrospectively to longitudinal registry-based employment information spanning ages 30-65 years. An occupational social interaction score was computed using occupational characteristics from the O*NET database. Multinomial logistic regression was used to estimate the associations between occupational social interaction and dementia and mild cognitive impairment (MCI), while linear regression was used to model the association with cognition using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). The models were subsequently adjusted for confounding variables age, sex, education, and apolipoprotein E-ε4 genotype, as well as for midlife family, health, and lifestyle-related variables collected from national registries and earlier Trøndelag Health Study waves. Higher occupational social interaction was associated with reduced risks of dementia and MCI, and better MoCA performance. Adjusted for confounding from age, sex, education, and apolipoprotein E-ε4, each standard deviation higher occupational social interaction score was associated with a relative risk ratio of 0.89 for dementia (p = .003), 0.88 for MCI (p < .001), and a 0.31-point higher MoCA score (p < .001). Our findings highlight the importance of occupational social interaction in preserving and promoting cognitive health in later life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).