Journals of Gerontology Series B-Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences最新文献

Objectives: This study aimed to explore the walking experiences of older adults in Seoul by uncovering the interaction between perception, behavior, and the environment. Specifically, we provided a thick description of how walking shapes and reflects self-identity, social connections, and everyday practices among older adults living in a walkable urban neighborhood.

Methods: A qualitative geographic information system approach was employed to integrate qualitative and geospatial methods. From July to December 2020, 38 older adults residing in a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood in Seoul were recruited. Data collection involved individual in-depth interviews, mobile global positioning system (GPS) tracking, and ActiGraph monitoring. Thematic coding and categorization of interview data was integrated with GPS and ActiGraph data to identify patterns and contextual conditions for walking.

Results: Older adults in this study perceived walking as essential to their autonomy and well-being, reinforcing a healthy self-image and fostering social connections. The dense and diverse urban environment facilitated walking for both leisure and practical purposes, creating opportunities for social interaction and informal social safety networks. However, participants who walked for work, such as collecting recyclables, achieved fewer physical health benefits than those who walked for leisure. The integration of qualitative and spatial behavioral data triangulated participants' narratives with neighborhood walking patterns in activity levels, purpose-specific routes, and natural social hubs.

Discussion: These insights highlight the need for urban health policies to prioritize walkable environments that promote active living and equitable access to daily opportunities for older adults. Addressing these challenges requires practical strategies that promote healthy aging and reduce social inequalities supporting everyday physical and social engagements.

Objectives: Poor sleep quality and disorders like insomnia are prevalent in the aging population. This mixed-methods study aimed to identify predictors of sleep quality.

Methods: In an online survey, 152 participants aged 65-86 completed questionnaires assessing sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index [PSQI]), depressive symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory [BDI]), and cognitive reserve (Cognitive Reserve Test [CoRe-T]), alongside a narrative about their sleep experiences.

Results: Demographics, depression, and cognitive reserve (CR) explained 79.3% of the variance in sleep quality. Age and depression predicted poorer sleep, whereas CR was linked to better sleep quality. Depression moderated this effect, reducing CR's protective role. Participants' narratives explained an additional 5.1% of the variance, with negative emotional language predicting poorer sleep and a present or past focus linked to better sleep. Higher CR correlated with more positive emotions and less present focus.

Discussion: Cognitive reserve protects against sleep problems, and subjective reports offer insight into sleep perception, beneficial for prevention and treatment strategies.

Objectives: The relationship between resilience trajectories and cognitive health is not well understood. This study aimed to identify clusters of psychological resilience trajectories in a national sample of older adults and to examine the association with cognitive impairment over time.

Methods: This study used data from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) from 2008 to 2018, and 2,788 respondents were included in this prospective analysis. Using a group-based trajectory modeling approach, we identified resilience trajectory groups over a 6-year period. Cox proportional hazards models were used to assess the relationship between the resilience trajectory groups and cognitive impairment.

Results: Three distinct trajectories of psychological resilience, including decreasing resilience group (n = 131, 4.7%), persistent middle resilience group (n = 1,808, 64.8%), and persistent high resilience group (n = 849, 30.5%). During the 6-year follow-up, compared to those with persistent high resilience, participants with persistent middle resilience (hazard ratios [HR] = 1.40, 95% confidence intervals [95% CI] = 1.11-1.75) and decreasing resilience (HR = 2.31, 95% CI = 1.65-3.23) remained consistently associated with a higher risk of cognitive impairment. The associations between resilience trajectories and cognitive impairment varied by lifestyle and health conditions.

Discussion: Psychological resilience is a relatively stable trait among older adults in China, with most individuals maintaining a persistently high or middle level of resilience throughout the follow-up period; however, declining psychological resilience was significantly associated with the risk of cognitive impairment. Therefore, developing targeted interventions to strengthen psychological resilience in older adults is crucial for promoting cognitive health and successful aging.

Objectives: Research is needed about the role of families in relation to issues faced by middle-aged and older gay and lesbian adults, such as internalized homophobia and families of choice. This study examines how families of choice and families of origin shape experiences of internalized homophobia in midlife and older gay and lesbian adults, a population uniquely affected by the cumulative effects of societal stigma over the life course.

Methods: We sampled 409 adults aged 50+ (range: 50-85) who self-identify as lesbian women or gay men. They answered a questionnaire about families of choice, families of origin, and internalized homophobia. Mediation models examined the role of families in the association of gender and internalized homophobia.

Results: Lesbian women reported lower internalized homophobia compared to gay men, and this was partially explained by their greater likelihood of citing spouses/partners and children as close others. Friends in one's family of choice were not associated with gender or internalized homophobia. Men were more likely to cite close siblings, and this was related to lower internalized homophobia, although siblings did not mediate the association of gender and internalized homophobia.

Discussion: Higher internalized homophobia of gay men in later life might be partially explained by being less likely to have a spouse/partner and children, reflecting cumulative effects of lifelong discrimination and stigma. These findings could foster better interventions aimed at specific needs of aging men and women from sexual minorities, considering their life course experiences and social resources.

Objectives: Internalized HIV stigma refers to the negative beliefs, feelings, and attitudes that people with HIV (PWH) adopt about themselves due to societal HIV stigma. Internalized HIV stigma negatively affects mental health but less is known about this factor on cognitive function in PWH. This study examines associations between internalized HIV stigma and cognition among women aged 50+ with HIV.

Methods: Internalized HIV stigma was measured in the Women's Interagency HIV Study between 2013 and 2015 using the HIV stigma scale (negative self-image subscale). Executive function, processing speed, attention/working memory, verbal learning, verbal memory, verbal fluency, and fine motor function were assessed using a validated cognitive battery. Demographically adjusted T-scores were calculated for each domain (higher scores = better performance). A global cognition score was computed by averaging the domain-specific scores. Linear regression models adjusted for age, race, ethnicity, cognition at baseline, average annual income, undetectable viral load, smoking history, recent nonprescription drug use, menopausal status, depressive symptoms, and alcohol use.

Results: Participants' (N = 760) mean age was 54 years; 61% identified as Black/African American; 13% were Hispanic; and 54% had an annual income below $12,000. The median time between the first and second cognitive assessments was 4 years. Higher internalized HIV stigma was associated with poorer global cognitive function, verbal learning, and verbal memory at time 2.

Discussion: Findings suggest assessing and monitoring HIV stigma may benefit cognitive function for older women aging with HIV by identifying those at greater risk for cognitive decline who could be targeted for stigma reduction interventions.

Objectives: This study examined the reciprocal relationship between older adults' well-being and their accounts of human-nature relations (HNR). Guided by the tenets of the Eco-Appreciation Perspective, the question addressed was: What can be learned from older adults' relations with nature about reciprocal nature-based welfare in older adulthood?

Methods: In-depth interviews were conducted with 60 participants over the age of 65 in Israel, followed by a sequential deductive-inductive analysis of the data.

Results: Four major themes were yielded: HNR as presence and being; HNR as connection; HNR as past, present, and future; and HNR as benevolence. Participants' experiences revealed an interaction between gratitude and awareness toward HNR and an enhanced sense of well-being, purpose, meaning, and belonging. The analysis also exposed novel insights into how HNR in older adulthood can prompt mutual nature-based welfare and provide an ongoing source of comfort and resilience, both through current activities and by accessing childhood memories.

Discussion: The findings are discussed in the context of eco-centric viewpoints on contemporary aging, and highlight the active role that older adults can play in deepening their connection with nature while calling on professionals in health, gerontology, social work, and community care to recognize and harness the mutual benefits of this bond.

Objectives: Aging populations commonly experience a decline in sensory functions, which negatively affects perceptual decision making. The decline in sensory functions has been shown to be partially compensated by audiovisual integration. Although audiovisual integration may have a positive effect on perception, it remains unclear whether the perceptual improvements observed in older adults during perceptual decision making are better explained by the early or late integration hypothesis.

Methods: An audiovisual categorization task was used to explore responses to unisensory and audiovisual stimuli in young and older adults. Behavioral drift-diffusion model (DDM) and electroencephalography (EEG) were applied to characterize differences in cognitive and neural dynamics across groups.

Results: The DDM showed that older adults exhibited higher drift rates and shorter nondecision times for audiovisual stimuli than for visual or auditory stimuli alone. The EEG results showed that during the early sensory encoding stage (150-300 ms), older adults exhibited greater audiovisual integration in beta band than younger adults. In the late decision-formation stage (500-700 ms), older adults exhibited greater audiovisual integration in beta band and greater audiovisual integration in the anterior frontal electrodes than younger adults.

Discussion: These findings highlight the crucial role of audiovisual integration in both the early and late stages of perceptual decision making in older adults. The results suggest that enhanced audiovisual integration in older adults compared with younger adults may serve as a specific mechanism to mitigate the negative effects of aging on perceptual decision making.

Objectives: Stressor appraisals are a transaction between the environment and the individual, such that individuals may appraise a situation as stressful when the problem is greater than the resources available to address it. Stressors appraised as threatening to the way one feels about themselves, their plans for the future, or their own physical health and safety are known to increase negative affect. Appraisal theory frames our predictions regarding the importance of daily contexts and aging processes to understand how stressor appraisals and feelings of aging may be associated with daily affective ratings. We investigated the potential interaction of daily stressors appraisals and daily subjective age on daily negative affect.

Methods: 101 younger adults (aged 18-36, M = 19.4, SD = 2.05) and 73 older adults (aged 60-90, M = 65.2, SD = 4.66) participated in an online 8-day daily diary study.

Results: Our results indicated a significant 2-way interaction between daily stressor appraisals and daily subjective age on daily negative affect, such that on days when participants reported low stress appraisals and younger subjective ages, participants also reported lower negative affect.

Discussion: The dynamic nature of stressor appraisals, in light of daily aging experiences and daily affective ratings, suggests potential benefits and boundaries associated with subjective aging experiences.

Objectives: Previous research on eldercare among minority populations often highlights the role of values, beliefs, and social expectations, placing greater emphasis on ideational factors than on sociostructural and health factors in explaining racial-ethnic differences in care arrangements. This study aims to describe the extent to which care received by older adults varies by race-ethnicity and to explore possible explanations for these variations using the behavioral model of health care use.

Methods: Data were sourced from the 2018 National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), a nationally representative survey of Medicare beneficiaries aged 68 and older. Latent class analyses were used to develop a care network typology with combinations of care from different sources. Multinomial regression models assessed various predisposing, enabling, and need factors associated with racial-ethnic differences in the distribution of constructed care network types. Formal mediation analysis tested potential mediators of these differences.

Results: Black and Hispanic older adults tended to receive care from children and extended kin caregivers, while White older adults were more likely to receive care from their spouses and perform self-care with assistive technologies. Mediation analyses revealed that racial-ethnic differences in care networks were primarily attributable to enabling factors, including family configurations, social networks, and socioeconomic status. Limited evidence was found for the roles of predisposing factors, measured by care preferences, and need factors, measured by health conditions, in explaining these differences.

Discussion: The findings highlight the need for more research and policy interventions to address the diverse challenges faced by socially disadvantaged older adults.

Objectives: Migration accelerates population aging in high-outmigration contexts. Older adults who remain in high-outmigration contexts are at higher risk of reduced support networks and increased caregiving burden, but prior work has not quantified how migration influences older adults' kinship structures in such places. This study aims to estimate the kinship structures of older adults living in Puerto Rico and the presence of migrant kin.

Methods: Data come from the United Nations World Population Prospects from 1950 to 2021. We created a 2-sex, multistate, time-variant kinship model to estimate how many and what type of family relationships we can expect for older adults in Puerto Rico and the presence of transnational kin.

Results: Our models suggest that a 65+-year-old living in Puerto Rico will have, on average, 5.6 close biological family members in 2021: 2.8 adult children and 2.7 siblings. These numbers represent a decline since 2000 when 65+-year-olds had 6.7 such kin. Under 2021 demographic conditions, adults 65 years of age are expected to have 69% of their total female close kin and 71% of daughters residing in the United States. The expected number of transnational living kin is greater for 2021 compared with 2000.

Discussion: Models suggest that future generations of older adults in Puerto Rico will have an increased presence of transnational family members. Thus, public health strategies must adapt to address the needs of transnational families in future generations of older adults.