Psychology and Aging最新文献

Age-related declines in motor control are well-documented. However, mixed findings are reported on the age-related changes in the ability to rapidly adjust ongoing movements in response to target perturbations. When age-related differences are observed, they are often attributed to a general age-related slowing rather than a specific decline in online correction. The lack of age-related differences is often speculated to result from compensatory strategies or preserved neurocomputational processes for online correction in older adults. This study was to (a) investigate whether there are age-related changes specific to online motor control and (b) explore the association between online motor control and motor imagery ability in older adults, as both processes rely on forward modeling to predict movement outcomes. Fifty-six young and 29 older participants completed a computer-based double-step reaching task. We found that older adults exhibited longer correction latencies, more rigid corrective movements, and reduced endpoint accuracy compared with younger adults. Notably, the prolonged correction times could not be fully explained by general age-related slowing in information processing. While older adults could use a speed-accuracy trade-off to enhance single-step reaching accuracy, this strategy was insufficient for double-step reaching, indicating age-related challenges in online motor correction. Moreover, older adults' online correction and double-step reaching accuracy were linked to their motor imagery ability, suggesting a reliance on forward modeling. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Older adults often show a deficit in associative memory for faces paired with pieces of information. Older adults also have a heightened trust for faces despite the information the faces are associated with, in some cases. The present study investigated young and older adults' associative memory for faces associated with scams, donations, or a neutral label and whether trustworthiness would be reflective of these associations. In three experiments, participants viewed faces associated with these labels for either 6 s (Experiment 1), 3 s (Experiment 2), or unlimited time (Experiment 3) and were tested on their memory for the labels. In addition, they rated the faces on their honesty before and after the label was presented. While young adults were more accurate than older adults when recalling the associated labels overall, both age groups showed a significant reduction in honesty ratings for the faces associated with scams after the association was made in all experiments. Therefore, these results illustrate that despite associative memory deficits, older adults can adjust their trust ratings for faces based on learning associative information regarding scams and fraud. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Midlife is often accompanied by a range of challenges that can heighten the risk of depressive symptoms in middle-aged adults. In this study, we seek to offer a comprehensive understanding of midlife depressive symptoms through a lifespan perspective. Toward that end, we draw on harmonized data from longitudinal studies across 17 nations (the United States, Mexico, China, South Korea, England, and countries in Continental, Mediterranean, and Nordic Europe), comprising a total of 119,534 middle-aged adults (M = 55.5 years at first assessment) born between 1938 and 1974. This approach allows us to examine both broader historical and sociocultural factors, as well as individual characteristics (i.e., gender, socioeconomic status, marital status, and health conditions), in relation to midlife depressive symptoms. Results revealed that middle-aged adults in the United States, England, Continental Europe, China, and Mexico reported higher levels of depressive symptoms compared to Nordic and Mediterranean Europe. Historical improvements were observed in England, where later born middle-aged adults reported fewer depressive symptoms than their earlier born counterparts. Our findings also highlight individual differences that operated consistently across historical time and nations (though with varying effect sizes): Middle-aged adults with lower education levels, those who were separated/divorced, and those with more health conditions reported higher depressive symptoms. Together, our findings highlight that midlife is not a uniform experience but rather differs by individual characteristics and broader sociocultural contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In a society that idealizes or stigmatizes women based on what they look like, body satisfaction may play an important role in how women feel about themselves overall. Although body satisfaction is thought to be relatively stable throughout adulthood, little is known about the relationship between body satisfaction and self-esteem across a woman's lifespan. Importantly, the self-concept is dynamic, changing as women grow and amass new responsibilities. Thus, there is reason to believe that body image should be less crucial to self-esteem later in life. In a cross-sectional survey of 806 women (half over age 65) and in secondary analyses of a large (n > 22,000 women) longitudinal data set, we explore this correlation, with an emphasis on including women over age 65, for whom this relationship has not been closely examined. In both studies, we find that the cross-sectional relationship between body satisfaction and self-esteem is weaker in older women than in younger women. Longitudinal analyses also show that the relationship slightly weakens across the 9 years the women were followed, regardless of their age at the start of the study. Survey results suggest this may be due to body image becoming less important to women as they age. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The fading affect bias (FAB) names the phenomenon that the affect intensity of negative autobiographical memories (AMs) fades more rapidly and to a greater extent from event occurrence to recall than the affect intensity of positive AMs. The goal of the present study was to examine whether and how the magnitude of the FAB varies with participant age, and whether these potential age effects could be explained by differences in the time elapsed since the events or their initial affect intensity. Analyses were based on 2,062 adults (aged 18-96 years; 60.67% women; 75.46% with a university entrance diploma; 95.68% with German as their mother tongue), who reported AMs of three positive and three negative events in a free recall procedure. Participants rated the affect intensity of each AM retrospectively from the perspective of event occurrence and from the momentary perspective of event recall. Latent change score models were used to operationalize and predict latent changes in AMs' positive and negative affect intensity as well as a latent overall FAB score. The magnitude of the FAB showed a U-shaped function across age, with a low point at age 40 and a maximum at the oldest age of the sample. After including the time since event and initial affect intensity, the FAB increased even more at older ages. The present findings, which extend previous research on age differences in the FAB, largely support predictions derived from the socioemotional selectivity theory and the strength and vulnerability integration model. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

History-graded increases in older adults' levels of cognitive performance across a number of different ability domains are well documented. Less is known, however, about whether such historical advances generalize to measures of verbal learning and whether rates of within-person change therein have also historically shifted. To examine these questions, we used up to 17+-years within-person longitudinal change data obtained in the Manchester Longitudinal Study of Cognition (MLSC). We matched cohorts and weighted analyses by age, number of measurement occasions, and education and compared up to four-wave longitudinal data from 1,279 participants born earlier in historical time (1903-1919, 2,668 observations) versus 1,049 participants born later (1920-1935, 2,239 observations). We applied growth models that orthogonalized between-person age and within-person aging effects, controlled for retest effects, and adjusted for sociodemographic characteristics. We found little to no evidence for historical improvements in verbal learning among older adults. It was only at the zero-order level when participants were in their 60s that later-born cohorts outperformed their matched earlier-born peers. We also found no evidence of historical improvements in the rate of within-person aging-related decline in verbal learning. If anything, the later-born cohort appeared to experience somewhat steeper declines, particularly at older ages. After statistically controlling for sex, occupational status, and city of residence, the only remaining cohort difference was the steeper quadratic (accelerated) rate of decline observed in the later-born cohort. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Accessing knowledge acquired across the lifespan differs from our ability to recall recent episodes or experiences, although the two processes are highly interrelated. Whereas episodic memory function typically declines with normal aging, semantic memory, including language and factual knowledge, are more robust to age-related decline. The structure and stability of acquired knowledge make it a potential asset in helping remember new information, even when it is completely unrelated. In the present study, we examined whether specialized knowledge about birds may help bird experts retain arbitrary episodic associations between (faces) paired with domain-relevant information (bird images) versus domain-irrelevant information (car images). After studying bird-face or car-face pairs, participants decided whether test pairs were either intact or recombined. Experts showed a large memory advantage for pairs in which faces had previously been paired with a bird versus a car, but no difference was found in novices. Although broad age-related declines in memory persisted, this benefit of prior knowledge was prevalent across the age range, such that relational memory performance in 75-year-old experts was roughly equivalent to corresponding performance in 20-year-old novices. These results show how expertise can offset age-related memory decline by allowing experts of all ages to efficiently link novel information to structured knowledge that has been accumulated across the lifetime. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Views on aging (VoA) have consequences for development across the lifespan affecting the aging process of individuals in important ways. Previous research has shown that how individuals perceive their own aging (i.e., personal VoA) predict how many years they live, with more positive self-views being associated with decreased risk of mortality. While views of older adults in general (i.e., generalized VoA), or age stereotypes, have been shown to predict worse physical, mental, and cognitive health, whether and how they are associated with mortality remains unclear. In this study, we thus aimed to use a multidimensional approach to examine the impact of both personal and generalized VoA on mortality risk. Data were drawn from the Ageing as Future longitudinal study and included participants who took part in the baseline assessment in 2009 (N = 768, 49.5% female, M_age = 55.17, age range = 30-80 years). Information on mortality was obtained 15 years later, in 2024. Replicating and extending previous findings, a survival analysis indicated that individuals with more positive future views of their own aging had a lower risk of mortality. However, when examining generalized VoA, a different pattern emerged. After accounting for the influence of internalization effects (captured by personal VoA), individuals with more negative views of older adults in general were found to have a lower risk of mortality. Both effects remained significant even after controlling for participants' age, gender, household income, education, self-rated health, and life satisfaction. The findings suggest that both personal and generalized VoA influence how long individuals live, although in opposing directions. We discuss these findings in terms of internalization and dissociation of VoA. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Adaptive cognitive control (ACC) involves behavioral adjustments to environmental changes and can be instantiated by implicit knowledge, including temporal predictability of task-relevant events. For example, our past driving experiences might inform us that yellow traffic signals generally last between 3 and 6 s. This information, gathered from a long-term history of similar situations, implicitly allows us to anticipate and decide whether to accelerate or brake based on the current context. Adaptability occurs by extracting local or global statistical contingencies in events' temporal structure, leading to faster responses for longer S1-S2 stimulus delays, known as the foreperiod effect, and longer reaction times in long- compared to short-biased contexts, respectively. This study aimed to examine age changes in local- and global-based ACC across the lifespan from 5 to 88 years of age (N = 608, 223 males, age: M = 34.8, SD = 22.1). The Dynamic Temporal Prediction task was used to assess behavioral adaptation to local/global temporal regularities manipulating list-wide the short-long percentage of S2 preparatory intervals. The results suggest distinct developmental trajectories for local- and global-based ACC. Both establish early (at 5-6 years) and progressively improve until adulthood (30-39 years). However, their efficiency declines with age, starting at different decades: from 40 years onward for local-based ACC and from 60 years onward for global-based ACC. These results support the idea that ACC relies on lower level abilities (e.g., associative learning), but it can be implicitly shaped by both local and global temporal prediction through domain-general processes implying inhibitory control and flexibility. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Cognition is a dynamic process and is subject to substantial variation across short and long timescales. It is becoming common to assess cognition repeatedly over short intervals to determine the correlates and consequences of such "cognitive variability." A high-frequency cognitive assessment approach is also an ideal method for measuring how cognition operates in daily life. Nevertheless, several fundamental questions regarding the nature of cognitive variability remain unanswered. We utilize data from the COGITO study, which administered nine separate cognitive tests to more than 200 participants for 100 days to answer the following questions: Do different tasks exhibit similarly reliable levels of variability, and does variability cluster into distinct cognitive domains? This rich data set was analyzed using Bayesian mixed-effects location scale models which simultaneously estimate individual means and variability. All nine tasks exhibited significant variability across the 100 days of testing. Tasks within the domains of episodic memory or processing speed were moderately correlated with each other suggesting some degree of domain specificity. Working memory tasks, on the other hand, did not correlate well with each other suggesting variability in these tasks is dominated by momentary or task-specific influences. These findings not only advance our theoretical understanding of what cognitive variability is but also provide insight into which cognitive tests are most suitable for high-frequency administration and thus may be most amenable to use for studying aging and cognitive processes as they occur in daily life. Appropriate limits on the generalizability of our results are noted. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).