Psychology and Aging最新文献

Leisure activities may protect cognitive performance in older age, but the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. This study examined the short-term time-lagged associations between leisure activities that are minimally physically active (e.g., meeting friends; hereinafter referred to as "leisure activities") and working memory, and whether affect and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (i.e., cortisol) mediate such associations. We examined 7,928 observations provided by 235 participants (aged 56-88 years, 49% women) from the German socioeconomic panel. Over 7 days, participants reported their leisure activities and affect (i.e., valence and arousal), completed an ambulatory working memory task, and provided saliva samples five times per day. Results from multivariate multilevel time series analyses show that a bout of leisure activity (that happened within the recent 3 hr) was associated with subsequent better working memory performance as captured 6 hr later, but not 3 hr later or at the same time. Moreover, high- and low-arousal positive affect and low-arousal negative affect mediated the temporal association. That is, a bout of leisure activity was associated with concurrent more high- and low-arousal positive affect and less low-arousal negative affect, which were associated with subsequent better working memory performance. In contrast, high-arousal negative affect and cortisol did not mediate the association. In addition, we observed heterogeneity across participants and reported generalizability of our hypothesis on leisure activities that are physically active (e.g., walking). In conclusion, engagement in leisure activities may have short-term benefits for working memory performance by enhancing affective well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Statistical learning, the ability to extract regularities from the environment, is a fundamental cognitive process that influences many aspects of human cognition. However, it is not yet entirely clear whether-and to what extent-this ability declines with age. While older adults are known to effectively learn environmental regularities to guide their search, it remains unclear whether they can also learn to suppress locations likely to contain a distractor. In the present study, 96 young and 96 older adults (M_ages = 24 vs. 65 years old, respectively) performed an additional singleton task, searching for a shape singleton while a color singleton distractor was present. Crucially, the color distractor appeared more frequently in one specific location than in others. In line with previous research, participants exhibited (a) more effective suppression of distractors appearing at high-probability locations; (b) a clear spatial gradient of suppression, with search efficiency decreasing as the distance from the distractor increased; and (c) hampered target selection when the target appeared at the location that usually contained a distractor. While both young and older adults showed learned suppression primarily in the first block, with the effect persisting throughout the experiment, older adults showed a smaller magnitude of suppression compared to young adults. We conclude that while the ability to learn statistical regularities largely remains intact with age, the behavioral consequences of this learning are reduced with old age. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Aging is often associated with cognitive decline, particularly in memory, which can impact language production. However, older adults (OA) do not exhibit a decline in crystallized intelligence, which reflects accumulated knowledge and expertise. The present study focuses on the referential phenomenon of lexical differentiation: When speakers refer to an object after earlier referring to a different exemplar from the same category, younger speakers sometimes use modified expressions (e.g., "the open umbrella") even though the earlier referent is no longer visible. We examine two hypotheses regarding lexical differentiation in older adults: the memory-based view that predicts less lexical differentiation in older adults due to memory decline, and the communication-based view that predicts equal or more lexical differentiation in older adults due to communicative and linguistic expertise. Results show that older adults produced similar levels of lexical differentiation (when considering all modifiers) and more lexical differentiation than younger adults (when focusing on prenominal modification), supporting the communication-based view. In addition, older adults produced more postnominal modifiers, which do not require early planning. These results highlight the adaptability of older adults in language production and provide new insights into how aging influences context-sensitive language use. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Previous research has indicated that a higher frequency of grandchild care is associated with better cognition and slower cognitive decline in grandparents. However, we do not know if specific caregiving activities (e.g., engaging in leisure activities with grandchildren, cooking for them) or the variety thereof affect grandparents' cognition and whether these effects are gender specific. Using latent growth curve models on three waves of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), which includes grandparents aged 50 and older (N > 1,700), we first compared caregiving grandparents to propensity score-matched noncaregiving grandparents. Then we examined the caregiving group specifically to understand if (a) caregiving frequency, (b) specific caregiving activities, or (c) the variety thereof predicted cognitive levels and decline. Both caregiving grandmothers and grandfathers showed higher levels of verbal fluency and episodic memory compared with matched controls, but only caregiving grandmothers showed less cognitive decline over time. Among caregiving grandparents, the frequency of caregiving did not predict cognitive functioning. However, grandparents with initially higher cognitive levels were more engaged in specific activities (e.g., spending leisure time with grandchildren, assisting them with homework) and participated in a wider variety of activities. Our findings reveal a link between grandchild care status and cognition among grandparents, while raising questions about the role of caregiving frequency and specific caregiving activities for cognitive level and decline. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

The apolipoprotein E epsilon 4 (APOE ε4) gene is associated with an increased risk of developing sporadic Alzheimer's disease (AD). Several studies have focused on declarative memory, where episodic memory deficits are reported in ε4 carriers, while semantic memory has received much less attention. To clarify whether the impact of APOE ε4 on declarative memory is specific to episodic memory, we administered a novel measure of autobiographical memory, the Semantic Autobiographical Interview. Thirty-eight healthy older adults were recruited, 19 ε4 carriers and 19 noncarriers, matched in age, education, and gender. The groups did not significantly differ in any neuropsychological tests except for recognition memory, where ε4 carriers showed reduced performance. On the original Autobiographical Interview (AI), results revealed a reduced number of target details in carriers. Together, these results suggest a reduction of episodic specificity in ε4 carriers. In contrast, carriers had very similar semantic production to noncarriers, whether it was for off-task semantic details in the AI, or on-task general and personal semantic details produced in the Semantic Autobiographical Interview. These results suggest that older adults retain the gist of their personal experience and that the semanticization of their autobiographical narratives is robust and less sensitive to risk for AD than episodic memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

This study investigated the effects of repeated retrieval practice (RP) on detailed and gist memory retention in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and cognitively normal (CN) controls, with a focus on the role of hippocampal volume in memory performance. Sixty-seven older adults (30 aMCI, 37 CN) completed neuropsychological assessments and structural magnetic resonance imaging scans. Participants learned two episodic events containing both detailed and gist information; one event was subjected to RP across five retrieval trials. Results showed that although aMCI participants exhibited lower immediate recall than CNs, RP significantly enhanced their retention, ultimately aligning performance with that of CNs. In aMCI, both detailed and gist memory improved markedly between the first and second retrievals, after which performance plateaued, yielding comparable retention gains by the final test. In contrast, CN participants maintained stable performance across trials, indicating limited benefits from RP. Prior to RP, both memory types were positively associated with posterior hippocampal volume. These associations diminished following RP: Detailed memory gains at the third retrieval were instead linked to smaller total hippocampal volumes, whereas gist memory showed no significant relationships. By the final test, hippocampal volume no longer predicted memory performance. These findings suggest that RP may reduce detectable structure-behavior associations, highlighting its potential as a cognitive intervention for mitigating memory decline in at-risk aging populations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

A significant body of research exists regarding the benefits of engaging in prosocial behaviors for older adults. However, less is understood about how prosocial behaviors are associated with the subjective experience and evaluation of successful aging in situ. Successful aging refers to a developmental process characterized by the achievement and maintenance of good health, high functioning, social engagement, and positive well-being. This study explored the relationship between prosocial engagement and subjective successful aging at the momentary level. The ebbs and flows of prosocial activity in daily life may carry costs and benefits at different times, especially among older adults who dedicate significant time and effort to prosocial avenues. A purposive sample of 165 older high-commitment volunteers and social innovators (M_age = 71.13, SD = 5.70) participated in a 7-day experience sampling study, responding to surveys at six random times per day. Results revealed that past-hour prosocial engagement was positively associated with both moment-level and person-level subjective successful aging indicators. These findings support an experiential, less static perspective on successful aging, highlighting how everyday prosocial actions are associated with older adults' momentary perceptions of aging well. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Age-related declines in visual perception challenge older adults' ability to locate and identify objects in noisy (e.g., fog, glare, inadequate lighting) or cluttered visual environments. To compensate, older adults often increase reliance on contextual information, which could be helpful, but may also lead to increased risk for "false seeing"-reporting expected objects based on contextual information rather than those actually presented-a phenomenon that Jacoby et al. (2012) observed in older adults under challenging viewing conditions. However, it remains unaddressed whether such false seeing is driven by older adults' elevated tendency to rely on context or by age-related declines in visual perceptual processes. The present study addressed this issue by examining the lexical priming effects in 18 younger and 18 older adults (M = 21.4 years; M = 76.2 years) in Experiment 1 and 13 younger and 13 older adults (M = 21.2 years; M = 74.8 years) in Experiment 2 using a two-alternative, forced-choice paradigm, while controlling for age-related perceptual differences. On each trial, participants identified a visually degraded target word preceded by an identical, semantically related, or unrelated prime. We applied signal detection theory to isolate perceptual sensitivity (d') and response bias (c). Results revealed that once stimulus parameters were adjusted to eliminate age differences in performance when the prime was unrelated to the target, age-related differences in target identification in the related priming conditions were predominantly driven by age-related differences in response bias rather than in any residual age differences in perceptual sensitivity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

In the lab, aging is associated with a shift in autobiographical memory from richly detailed, context-bound episodes to more schematic, gistlike representations, yet evidence from real-world and fine-grained adult-lifespan samples remains scarce. We analyze ≈365,000 German hotel reviews as naturalistic memory reports across adulthood and evaluate average word length as a theoretically grounded, scalable marker of linguistic abstraction (longer words = greater abstraction). We then test whether this marker increases with age, consistent with a shift in the expression of autobiographical memories away from perceptually grounded detail and toward more abstract, generalized (gistlike) representations. We find that average word length increases with age, driven by more nominalizations and fewer function words (a lexical pattern replicated in an independent English corpus, ∼1.4 M reviews; no age data), consistent with greater linguistic abstraction. Importantly, word length variation tracked ambient temperature during the stay (encoding) more than the review context (recall), indicating that the increase in word length with age is not just due to changes in linguistic style. Convergent validity via automated autobiographical interview coding of an English subset (n = 1,000) furthermore indicated that longer word reviews contained fewer internal and more external details. These findings establish average word length as a scalable, theoretically grounded marker of autobiographical abstraction, not merely linguistic style. They replicate laboratory findings in large-scale, naturalistic data and indicate that older adults express more gistlike memory representations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Memory for details declines with typical aging, whereas gist memory is preserved. Yet, the exact nature of the gist memory representations that are preserved in older adults is not fully understood. Most studies have investigated memory for conceptual gists or general, superordinate, features. In contrast, older adults' memory for visuospatial, structural gists has received little attention. In the present study, we designed a new forced-choice recognition memory task that enables to assess short-term memory for structural gists and scene details while overcoming prior limitations such as the confounding between structural and conceptual gists and unbalanced task difficulty. The paradigm is composed of a gist memory task and a detail memory task. In two pilot studies conducted online in young participants (N = 120 overall), we (a) selected the image pairs most suited for our tasks and (b) validated the task procedure by showing that shortening encoding time impacted performance in the detail memory task more than in the gist memory task, supporting that detailed and gist representations are involved in these conditions, respectively. In the main, preregistered experiment, we investigated age-related differences in short-term memory for structural gists and scene details (N = 50 younger and N = 50 older participants). As predicted, performance in the detail memory task, but not in the gist memory task, was lower in older adults compared to younger adults, while task difficulty was balanced between the tasks. Overall, our results support that the preservation of gist memories in typical aging extends to the basic layout of the scene in which an event took place. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).