Individuals faced extraordinary challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, psychosocial strengths may promote individuals' adjustment during times of challenge. Positive self-perceptions of aging (SPA) have been found to predict a variety of health and well-being indicators outside the context of the pandemic. In the present study, we examined SPA (measured prior to the pandemic) as a prospective predictor of COVID-19-related behavior, adaptation, and functioning in a sample of 3,620 adults (Mage = 65.88; 61.1% women; 65.4% White) from the 2016 to 2020 waves of the Health and Retirement Study. Linear regressions revealed that more positive SPA in 2016 were associated with a higher likelihood of socially distanced behavior (β = .07, p < .001), less worry (β = -.27, p < .001), less stress (β = -.24, p < .001), less loneliness (β = -.27, p < .001), and greater positive functioning (β = .20, p < .001) during the first year of the pandemic (2020). Confounding variables explained SPA's associations with preventive behavior and (to an extent) socially distanced behavior. Findings support SPA theories, suggesting linkages between SPA and flexible, adaptive behaviors and outcomes in the face of external challenges. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

We investigated how lexical form similarity of referential candidates and ambiguity of following pronouns impact the encoding and retrieval of words from memory during sentence processing in younger and older adults. Critical sentences included two noun phrases (henceforth NPs) that were either phonologically and orthographically similar (Jason and Jacob/Jade) or dissimilar (Jason and Matt/Hannah), followed by a pronoun (e.g., he) that was either ambiguous or unambiguous (depending on the genders of the preceding NPs). We analyzed brain activity time-locked to the onsets of the second NP (NP2) and the pronoun to investigate the encoding and the retrieval of the NPs, respectively. During encoding NP2, older adults exhibited greater alpha power when NP1 had the same-gender, whereas younger adults showed no such effect, suggesting an increased need for inhibition for older adults during encoding. Moreover, although both groups exhibited an increase in alpha power for similar NPs, only younger adults exhibited a theta power increase, suggesting similarity-induced inhibition for both groups, but an additional maintenance cost only for younger adults. During retrieval (i.e., on the pronoun), we found that both pronominal ambiguity and form similarity resulted in greater theta power for younger adults, suggesting full pronominal processing and therefore more difficult retrieval, but smaller theta/alpha power for older adults, suggesting good-enough processing and therefore easier retrieval. Together with complementary behavioral results, our findings suggest that older adults resort to good-enough referential processing when the retrieval of relevant representations is cognitively demanding. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Age-related changes in cognitive and biological processes mean that older adults show markedly lower performance on cognitive assessments than younger adults. Characterizing the precise nature of age-related differences in cognitive performance and whether they vary as a function of key demographic characteristics has been challenging due to small effect sizes, underpowered samples, and blunt analysis methods. In the present study, we address these issues by using a massive cross-sectional data set of approximately 750,000 English-speaking participants who completed at least one battery from the NeuroCognitive Performance Test. We employ stacked ensembles, a machine learning approach, to model differences in age-related cognitive performance from 25 to 80 years based on gender and education. We utilize bootstrapping to quantify uncertainties and compare predicted performances across age, gender, education, and subtest while accounting for data variability. We then use clustering techniques to identify cognitive subtests with similar patterns across demographics. Our novel approach reveals several notable trends. For example, tasks reliant on semantic knowledge and fluid reasoning, such as completing patterns or arithmetic word problems, exhibit similar education-dependent variation. On tasks where men outperform women at early ages, men's predicted performance also shows greater decline across the age range, resulting in a narrower or nonexistent gender gap at older ages. We discuss additional age, gender, and education interactions, as well as variations in the magnitude and onset age of change in the predicted slope of performance, most of which appear dependent on the specific cognitive area being evaluated. Implications for theories of aging are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

It is well-known that sentential context modulates sentence processing. But does context also have effects that extend beyond the immediate moment, for example, by impacting the memory representations that people store? And are there age-related differences in this process? Here, we investigated this question. German readers who varied in age self-paced through constraining sentences that continued in a predictable or less predictable fashion. Participants' recognition memory was then tested for previously seen (i.e., "old") words and for initially predictable but not actually presented words (i.e., "lures"). The results showed that readers of all ages slowed down when reading unpredictable sentences. However, aging individuals maintained less sentence-specific information than younger adults: They not only understood sentential materials less correctly on the fly, but they also showed disproportionate rates of false remembering and less successful old-new discrimination in the recognition memory test. Of note, rates of false remembering were reduced in those aging readers who allocated more time toward reading unpredictable sentence continuations. Together, our results show that aging increases reliance on gist or schema-congruent processing but that more attentive encoding of text can buffer against some of the resulting memory distortions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Negative views of aging (VoA) present a motivational barrier to healthy aging. Although prior interventions have demonstrated success in making adults' negative VoA more positive, reliance on self-report-based explicit measures is insufficient to examine whether these interventions also affected individuals' implicit VoA. Thus, this study assessed the impact of the AgingPLUS program, a 4-week psychoeducational intervention, on implicit measures of VoA in a randomized controlled trial. Participants aged 45-75 years ( = 60.1 years, = 8.3) were randomized to either the AgingPLUS program (n = 162) or a health education control group ( = 173). Implicit VoA were assessed using two computer-administered tasks: the Implicit Association Test and a lexical decision-making task. Data on implicit VoA were collected at baseline and two follow-up assessments over a 32-week period and analyzed using linear mixed-effects models. The results showed limited evidence of temporal changes or group differences regarding implicit VoA. However, participants with more positive baseline implicit VoA demonstrated greater improvements in explicit VoA, particularly in their awareness of age-related gains. Overall, explicit intervention approaches, such as the AgingPLUS program, can lead to substantial improvements in adults' self-reported VoA, although their effect on implicit VoA remains unclear. The findings underscore the importance of future interventions to (a) evaluate both explicit and implicit VoA and (b) tailor intervention designs to specific outcomes to achieve sustained, long-term positive changes in negative VoA. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The study of whether temporal processing in the millisecond-to-seconds range changes with age is an active and debated research field. Here, we adopted a lifespan approach in which younger to older participants performed both explicit and implicit timing tasks (time bisection and foreperiod tasks, respectively) in a single session. Three hundred seven participants (age range: 20-85 years) took part in the study. Participants performed two timing tasks to test explicit and implicit time processing. Age was used as a continuous predictor to elucidate whether explicit and implicit temporal processing change with increasing age. The results from the explicit timing task showed reduced precision with age, as indexed by a flatter psychometric curve and greater just noticeable difference metrics. By contrast, implicit processing of time was not significantly affected by age, as evinced by a comparable foreperiod effect across age. These findings provide first adult lifespan evidence that only explicit, but not implicit, timing is sensitive to age-related changes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

One of the pivotal structural changes observed in the ageing brain pertains to the corpus callosum, the largest neural pathway interconnecting the two cerebral hemispheres. Studies have highlighted the degeneration of the corpus callosum, particularly in its anterior segments, as individuals age. This prompts an essential question regarding the potential functional repercussions of these structural changes on interhemispheric communication among older adults. Two experiments were conducted to explore potential compromises in the interhemispheric transfer of visual working memory (VWM) in older adults. Both young individuals (aged 18-28 years) and healthy older adults (aged 65-85 years) engaged in modified versions of the one-back paradigm. In this task, stimuli were sequentially presented in either the left or right hemifield, and participants indicated whether each stimulus matched the preceding one. Notably, when two stimuli are matched, they could appear either in the same hemifield or in opposite hemifields. The results revealed that, in comparison to young adults, older adults demonstrated a significant increase in matching errors when the two stimuli were presented in opposite hemifields rather than the same hemifield. This new finding strongly suggests a reduced interhemispheric transfer of VWM in older adults, potentially attributed to age-related atrophy in the anterior part of the corpus callosum. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Representational momentum (RM) refers to the phenomenon in which an observer's judgment of the final location of a previously viewed moving target is often displaced forward in the direction of motion. This phenomenon is an adaptive mechanism that compensates for neural processing delays and is closely associated with visual cortex function. However, the impact of age-related decline of visual cortex function on the manifestations of RM remains unclear. The present study examined differences in the RM effect between older ( = 82) and younger adults ( = 74) using a cursor-positioning task. Additionally, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to explore the potential neural substrates that underlie these differences, employing amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF, reflecting the intensity of neural activity) and regional homogeneity (ReHo, reflecting the synchronization of neural activity) as indicators. Our findings indicate a significant increase in RM among older adults compared with younger adults. Neuroimaging data revealed a significant decrease in ALFF and ReHo within extensive regions of the visual cortex in older adults, validating age-related differences in this cortical area. More importantly, ALFF values in the bilateral visual area 3 and ReHo values in the bilateral visual area 2 in older adults exhibited a strong negative correlation with their RM effects. These results suggest that larger RM in older adults may be functional compensation for aging of the visual cortex. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The present study examined beliefs about how one's life satisfaction is unfolding over time in relation to conceptions of aging in an online American adult lifespan sample ( = 882; = 47.89, = 15.30, range = 19-84 years; 56% female). Single-item and multi-item ratings of recollected past, current, and anticipated future life satisfaction were employed, along with subjective perceptions of change in life satisfaction over time. Person-centered (latent profile) analysis identified distinct linear and nonlinear patterns of beliefs concerning past-current and current-future changes in life satisfaction: improve-improve, stable-stable, worsen-worsen, and worsen-improve. Multiple facets of conceptions of aging were assessed, including subjective perceptions of age (chronological vs. felt and desired age); attitudes toward, experiences of, and expectations concerning aging; future time perspective; and goal orientations (growth, maintenance, prevention of losses). Multinomial logistic regression models identified unique facets of conceptions of aging characterizing the four profiles. In general, individuals reporting a distinct profile conveying the belief that one's life was improving (vs. worsening) over time were characterized by more positive conceptions of aging. Further, conceptions of aging partially explained the link between chronological age and the belief that one's life is getting worse and worse (vs. better and better). Thus, the present work provides new insights into how age and conceptions of aging may shape the directions and patterns with which individuals view their lives to be unfolding over time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Older adults experience a greater benefit from multisensory integration than their younger counterparts, but it is unclear why. One hypothesis is that age-related sensory decline weakens unisensory stimulus effectiveness, causing a boost in multisensory gain through inverse effectiveness. Many previous studies present stimuli at the same intensity for both younger and older adults (i.e., stimulus-matched), as opposed to accounting for each participant's unique perceptual ability (i.e., perception-matched). This makes it difficult to discern the source of age-related differences in multisensory gain. As such, we used two experiments to examine whether sensory decline is contributing to age-related differences in multisensory gain. In the first, we presented auditory (pure tones in noise), visual (Gabor patches in noise), and audiovisual stimuli and recorded response times from 31 younger (18-25) and 30 older (55-80) adults. Importantly, all participants were given identical stimuli, with the expectation that older adults would show worse unisensory performance, inducing inverse effectiveness. The second task was identical (younger = 31, older = 34), except stimuli were presented at each participant's 50% detection threshold, identified with an adaptive psychophysical staircase, controlling for any influence of inverse effectiveness. Older adults were found to exhibit greater multisensory gain (as measured by race model violations) on stimulus- but not perception-matched tasks, thus aligning with the principle of inverse effectiveness. That is, when accounting for potential age-related differences in perceptual abilities, older adults no longer experienced greater benefit from multisensory integration. These two experiments together suggest that the age-related increases in multisensory integration previously reported may be in part due to age-related declines in vision and audition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The present study examined age differences in the influence of informational value cues on curiosity and information seeking. In two experiments, younger and older adults (total = 514) rated their curiosity about content before having the opportunity to seek out more information. Experiment 1 examined the impact of social value on curiosity and information seeking about trivia. Online popularity metrics served as social value cues. Metric visibility increased engagement with high-popularity information for older adults, whereas it decreased engagement with low-popularity information for younger adults. Experiment 2 examined the impact of practical value on curiosity and information seeking about science facts. Personal and collective practical value were highlighted by linking the information to the domains of medicine and the environment, respectively. Patterns of curiosity and information seeking revealed greater sensitivity to collective practical value in older than younger adults. In both experiments, the relationship between curiosity and information seeking was stronger in older adults than in younger adults. Overall, these findings suggest that age differences in motivational priorities may lead to age differences in curiosity and information seeking. In addition to highlighting strategies for fostering curiosity in older learners, these findings may also inform digital literacy interventions aimed at reducing engagement with clickbait and misinformation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

People spontaneously segment an observed everyday activity into discrete, meaningful events, but segmentation can be modified by task goals. Asking young adults to attend to event segmentation while watching movies of everyday actions improved their memory up to 1 month later (Flores et al., 2017). Does attending to event segmentation improve memory across the lifespan? Participants between the ages of 20 and 79 watched movies of actors performing everyday activities while intentionally encoding them for a recall and a recognition memory test 1 week (Experiment 1) or 1 month (Experiment 2) later. In addition to intentionally encoding the movies, half of the participants segmented the movies into fine-grained events. Young adults who segmented recalled more words in their recall responses than those who intentionally encoded 1 week and 1 month later. Middle-aged adults benefited from the intervention after a 1-week delay but not after a 1-month delay. Older adults over the age of 70 did not benefit from attending to segmentation. Of those who segmented, young and older adults showed similar agreement about the locations of event boundaries. Together, the results suggest that older adults are less able, compared to young adults, to maintain or retrieve well-encoded event memories after a delay. In addition, individual differences in segmentation agreement predicted memory up to 1 month later, regardless of age. These results suggest a practical and easy-to-implement intervention for improving recall of everyday events in young and middle-aged adults that is ineffective in older adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Many older adults do not meet the physical activity recommendations of the American Heart Association; hence, it is important to understand the factors that can facilitate regular physical activity in older adults. Notably, the role of affective response has been understudied. Mixed findings have been reported in terms of age effects in affective response to daily physical activity. This study aimed to determine age differences in affective response to daily physical activity and whether these differences are associated with overall physical activity levels. Further, the role of contextual factors in age differences in affective response following daily physical activity was examined. Younger ( = 59) and older adults ( = 60) completed 1 week of experience sampling during which they responded to daily prompts about their affect and physical activity. Overall physical activity levels were estimated via actigraphy. In both age groups, daily physical activity was similarly associated with greater high-arousal positive (HAP) affect relative to other activities. Across age groups, participants reported more HAP affect when engaging in daily physical activity in a group compared to alone. Greater duration and enjoyment of daily physical activity were more strongly associated with greater HAP affect in younger adults relative to older adults. Affective responses following bouts of daily physical activity did not predict overall physical activity levels for either age group. Overall, older adults may experience similar positive affective response to younger adults following daily physical activity relative to other activities. These affective responses may have a limited role in physical activity engagement in daily life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Research has long shown that men suffer more from romantic breakups than women. We predicted that men would on average be less inclined to initiate separation, decline with the separation more in well-being and increase more in loneliness, are less satisfied with singlehood, and desire a new partner more than women. We theorized that these gender differences in separation adaptation could be linked to men's higher reliance on their partners for emotional support. Because socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that with age people shift toward more fulfilling social connections, we also expected men's dependency on their partners for emotional support to be smaller in midlife than in young adulthood. To examine our hypotheses, we analyzed multiyear within-person longitudinal change data from 1,530 mostly unmarried participants from the annual German pairfam study who had experienced a relationship dissolution. We applied propensity score matching to compare separation-related changes in well-being and loneliness to case-matched controls who remained in a romantic relationship. Results showed that men relative to women were less likely to initiate separation, less satisfied with singlehood, and wished for a partner more. In contrast to our expectations, the gender differences observed did not differ by age, and no gender differences were found in separation-related changes in well-being and loneliness. Dissolution-related effects on well-being were only evident for marital relationships, while dissolution-related effects on loneliness were equally strong for marital and nonmarital dissolutions. Our study suggests that previous findings on gender-specific divorce-induced changes in well-being may not generalize to nonmarital dissolutions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Major depressive disorder accelerates DNA methylation age, a biological aging marker. Subclinical depressive symptoms are common, but their link to DNA methylation aging in older adults remains unexplored. This study analyzed the cross-sectional relationship between depressive symptoms and accelerated DNA methylation aging, considering gender and race/ethnicity in U.S. adults aged over 50. We used data from 3,882 diverse participants in the 2016 Health and Retirement Study wave, measuring blood DNA methylation age against chronologic age for acceleration. Depressive symptoms were assessed using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale. Multiple linear regression evaluated the association between depressive symptoms and DNA methylation age acceleration, adjusting for sociodemographic factors, blood cell proportions, and health behaviors (physical activity, alcohol use, smoking, and chronic conditions). Gender and race/ethnicity modifications were also tested. Depressive symptoms, measured by continuous CES-D score, high depressive symptoms (CES-D ≥ 4), or any symptoms (CES-D ≥ 1), significantly correlated with increased GrimAge DNA methylation age acceleration (all ≤ .001) in unadjusted and sociodemographic-adjusted models but were nonsignificant in fully adjusted models. No significant gender or race/ethnicity effect modifications were found in fully adjusted models. Health behaviors significantly influence DNA methylation age acceleration and depressive phenotypes, underscoring the need to understand their roles in assessing psychological factors related to DNA methylation age acceleration. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Both older and younger employees are stereotyped at work, making them susceptible to age-based stereotype threat or the concern about being negatively stereotyped based on their age. To date, there is limited understanding of the workplace events that spark age-based stereotype threat and the mechanisms through which they do so. The current daily diary study aimed to assess the frequency with which older and younger employees experience various events that have been identified as potential antecedents of age-based stereotype threat (e.g., being overlooked for training or development opportunities, feeling excluded from informal socializing) as well as their association with experiences of stereotype threat. As predicted, we found that employees who reported more frequent experiences of these events subsequently reported greater feelings of stereotype threat. This association was partially mediated by the capacity of these events to increase the salience of a participant's age. There was also evidence of reciprocal association, whereby employees who felt more stereotype threat were also more likely to subsequently report experiencing these events. Employee age did not moderate the relationship between daily feelings of stereotype threat and daily outcomes, suggesting that everyday feelings of stereotype threat may be equally problematic for both older and younger employees. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Previous research showed the importance of control beliefs for many life outcomes. The present study examines associations between subjectively perceived work environment and objectively measured work activities at the beginning of midlife as a central developmental phase in the context of work, with control beliefs across the subsequent 20 years. We analyzed four-wave longitudinal data from = 374 participants (born 1950-1952; baseline = 44 years, = 1; 44% women) from the Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Study of Adult Development and Aging within a structural equation modeling framework. Over 20 years and overall, internal control beliefs were stable, while external control beliefs decreased. Individuals who reported higher task variety and better social integration at work at baseline also reported higher levels of control beliefs for positive life outcomes. In addition, higher social integration at work at baseline was related to lower levels of external control beliefs. Work characteristics at baseline were not associated with individual differences in change in control beliefs across the 20-year observational interval. In summary, our findings suggest that work experiences at the prime of job-related development around the midst of the fifth decade of life do not play a major role in subsequent control beliefs development across 20 years. However, investigations measuring control beliefs as well as work characteristics continuously over a long period of time are necessary to shed light on reciprocal influences between work and personality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Prospective memory (PM)-the process of establishing intentions for future action and remembering to fulfill these intentions at the appropriate time-is necessary for many instrumental activities of daily living and for maintaining functional independence with increased age. Offloading PM demands onto the environment, such as setting a reminder alarm to take medication, offers an easy and effective way to mitigate age-related PM declines. However, a lack of basic knowledge about the cognitive and metacognitive processes that drive offloading decisions presents barriers to successful implementation. The present study addresses these issues by examining age differences in PM for offloaded (i.e., with reminders) and nonoffloaded (i.e., without reminders) intentions under low and high memory demands. With highly specific intentions that can be retrieved via bottom-up processes (Experiment 1), there were no age differences in PM without reminders, and younger and older adults equally benefitted from reminders under high memory load. With nonspecific intentions that require top-down attention for retrieval (Experiment 2), older adults had worse PM under high load without reminders. Critically, this age difference was eliminated with the use of reminders, likely due to increased reminder checking for older adults under high load. These findings suggest that offloading can circumvent cognitive capacity limitations and minimize computational effort to improve intention fulfillment in older adults. The theoretical and applied ramifications of these findings are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Reports an error in "Do caregiver interventions improve outcomes in relatives with dementia and mild cognitive impairment? A comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis" by Sheung-Tak Cheng, Kin-Kit Li, Peggy P. L. Or and Andrés Losada (, 2022[Dec], Vol 37[8], 929-953). In the original article, two of the labels in the first column of Table 6 were incorrect. The first Recommended intervention should have been "Education with psychotherapeutic components (psychoeducation-b)," and the first Moderately recommended intervention should have been "Education with probable psychological components (psychoeducation-a)." Despite the misnomers, the nature of the intervention type can be clearly discerned from the description in the far-right column. The online version of this article has been corrected. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2022-76749-001). Some reviews suggest benefits of nonpharmacological interventions for informal caregivers of people with dementia and mild cognitive impairment. These benefits may transfer to the care-recipients (CRs) through increased caregiving capability, reduced burden and depression among caregivers, and decreased negative mood contagion. However, large-scale review on these effects on the CRs is lacking. We searched PsycINFO, CINAHL with Full Text, MEDLINE, and PubMed from inception to end of 2020 and found 142 articles that reported randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of caregiver interventions using CR outcomes. Interventions were found to reduce neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) in general and behavioral and mood disturbance specifically, enhance cognition and quality of life, and delay institutionalization and mortality, with care coordination/case management, educational intervention with psychotherapeutic components (psychoeducation-b), and direct training of the CR (with caregiver involvement) being the more potent interventions. The kinds of benefit depend on the types of intervention. NPS was reduced by psychoeducation-b, care coordination/case management, and CR training. Cognition and quality of life were enhanced by CR training and care coordination/case management, respectively. Institutionalization was delayed by multicomponent interventions and respite (based on one study). However, the effects were generally small to very small. Together with existing findings on caregiver outcomes, a tripartite scaffolding model of caregiver support is proposed. The model is composed of three components: (a) care coordination/case management (i.e., enhanced usual care), (b) psychoeducation-b, and (c) CR training. Future directions in terms of developing consensual guidelines, a registry of intervention manuals, and family-centered programs with flexibility in delivery are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Retirement represents a significant life transition typically occurring in later adulthood, often accompanied by substantial lifestyle changes. Several theoretical frameworks suggest that these changes present both opportunities and challenges for well-being, and the extent to which individuals experience positive versus negative well-being outcomes may be influenced by various factors. To study such heterogeneity in retirement experiences, researchers have embraced person-centered methodologies. Yet, some previous studies have not robustly delineated retirement- from age-related changes in well-being, accounted for statistical uncertainties, or examined these diverse experiences outside of a Western context. These limitations preclude conclusions about the diverse experience of retirement. Using both person- and variable-centered approaches, this study examined life satisfaction trajectories before and after retirement among 532 retired middle-aged and older adults from the Singapore Life Panel. Controlling for age-related changes, latent growth mixture analysis was employed to identify retirement subgroups with varying life satisfaction trajectories. Three distinct trajectories were revealed-decreasingly satisfied, stable postretirement, and increasingly satisfied. As compared to those increasingly satisfied, decreasingly satisfied individuals tended to have lower social support, were higher on neuroticism, and had higher income. While expressed to a similar magnitude across profiles, education and religious activity also emerged as important predictors of well-being in retirement transition. Findings from the present study highlight the importance of recognizing heterogeneity in retirement experiences and opportunities for targeted interventions to support retirees' well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

We are continually required to exercise cognitive control in order to separate relevant and irrelevant information. Previous studies have produced mixed results as to whether cognitive control declines across adulthood and improves with practice. Moreover, little is known about the influences of aging and practice on the automatic and controlled processes underlying performance in conflict situations. This calls for analyses of extensive data using process models for conflict tasks, akin to earlier drift-diffusion model analyses of performance in cognitive nonconflict tasks. Thus, to understand how aging and practice influence cognitive control at the process level, we analyzed a large-scale data set (1,800 participants aged 21-80 years completing 60 blocklike online games of an arrow-based Eriksen flanker task). At the coarse-grained level of mean response times, the congruency effect increased across adulthood and decreased with practice following an initial increase. The finer-grained distributional response time and error rate data were closely fitted by the diffusion model for conflict tasks, which captures the dynamic interplay of automatic and controlled processing. Best-fitting parameter values revealed multiple, partially counteracting influences of aging and practice: Aging across adulthood slowed down both controlled and automatic processing (besides slowing down nondecisional processes and increasing decision caution). By contrast, practice selectively speeded up controlled processing (besides speeding up nondecisional processes and decreasing decision caution). Taken together, these findings suggest that aging and practice primarily alter the speed of controlled (aging and practice) and automatic processing (aging), rather than causing inhibitory adjustments in the strength of automatic processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

In this study, we evaluated birth cohort (i.e., generational) differences in the onset and rate of acceleration in cognitive decline prior to death (i.e., terminal decline [TD]). We obtained data from two cohorts, born in 1901-1902 ( = 755, 64% females) and 1930 ( = 347, 48% females), identified and sampled at age 70 from the same city population and assessed on the same cognitive tests at ages 70, 75, 79, 85, and 88. The 1901-1902 cohort was additionally assessed at ages 90, 92, 95, 97, 99, and 100. The outcome was defined at each measurement occasion by a composite score of three cognitive tests assessing spatial ability, perceptual and motor speed, and reasoning. Date of death was obtained from population register, with the last update in April 2023, covering over 99% and 38% of the cohort members, respectively. We fitted a random TD change point model to the data while accounting for sex and education. Findings revealed expected TD onset (as conditioned on male with formal education) 5.17 (95% highest density interval [2.54, 8.05]) years prior to death in the 1901-1902 cohort, with an acceleration in rate of decline by a factor of 4.43 within the TD phase. This estimate was delayed by 2.53 (95% highest density interval [5.68, 0.10]) years in the 1930 cohort, with an acceleration by a factor of 5.16 within the TD phase. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to present evidence indicating that today's birth cohort experience, on average, a shorter TD phase in comparison to earlier born cohorts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The COVID-19 pandemic was not only a biological challenge, but it also took a toll on the psychological and social well-being of older adults, especially those in nursing homes. This study aims to uncover the impact of the pandemic on the biopsychosocial well-being of nursing home residents, including the role of COVID-19 positivity and social contacts. Using a sample of 247 individuals in two Northern Italian nursing homes over 3 years (2018-2021), the study analyzed a broad range of biopsychosocial variables and traced the frequency of social contacts during the lockdown. The results showed a concerning trend of worsening well-being over time during the pandemic, irrespective of COVID-19 positivity. Surprisingly, the frequency of contacts with family caregivers did not seem to have a protective role, and worsening conditions were associated with an increase in subsequent social contacts. These findings shed light on the dynamics of the biopsychosocial well-being of institutionalized individuals, and they have significant public health implications. By disentangling the roles of the pandemic period, COVID-19 positivity, and social contacts, this study provides insights into the worsening of neuropsychiatric symptoms, as well as functional and clinical indicators, in nursing home residents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

To contribute to our understanding of cohort differences and the Flynn effect in the cognitive decline among older Americans, this study aims to compare rates of cognitive decline between two birth cohorts within a study of older Americans and to examine the importance of medical and demographic confounders. Analyses used data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study (2011-2019), which recruited older Americans in 2011 and again in 2015 who were then followed for 5 years. We employed mixed-effect models to examine the linear and quadratic main and interaction effects of year of birth while adjusting for covariates such as annual round, sex/gender, education, race/ethnicity, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, test unfamiliarity, and survey design. We analyzed data from 11,167 participants: 7,325 from 2011 to 2015 and 3,842 from 2015 to 2019. The cohort recruited in 2015 was born, on average, 5.33 years later than that recruited in 2011 and had higher functioning than the one recruited in 2011 across all observed cognitive domains that persisted after adjusting for covariates. In multivariable-adjusted analyses, a 1-year increase in year of birth was associated with increased episodic memory (β = 0.045, SE = 0.001, p < .001), orientation (β = 0.034, SE = 0.001, p < .001), and executive function (β = 0.036, SE = 0.001, p < .001). Participants born 1 year later had slower rates of decline in episodic memory (β = 0.004, SE = 0.000, p < .001), orientation (β = 0.003, SE = 0.000, p < .001), and executive function (β = 0.001, SE = 0.000, p = .002). Additionally, sex/gender modified this relationship for episodic memory (-0.007, SE = 0.002, p < .001), orientation (-0.005, SE = 0.002, p = .008), and executive function (-0.008, SE = 0.002, p < .001). These results demonstrate the persistence of the Flynn effect in old age across cognitive domains and identified a deceleration in the rate of cognitive decline across cognitive domains. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Age-related declines in the frequency of mind-wandering are well established. Theories of mind-wandering have attempted to explain why this decline occurs, but no one theory firmly predicts such changes. One problem with these theoretical views, and the studies that have grown out of them, is their reliance on cross-sectional methods, which do not account for within-person changes over time in mind-wandering, and it is well-documented that cross-sectional and longitudinal changes in some cognitive domains do not align. We present a novel analysis of longitudinal change in subjective and objective indicators of mind-wandering during a sustained attention task. Cognitively normal adults (N = 277, age range 42-94) completed a sustained attention task with thought probes to measure mind-wandering repeatedly over several years. Linear mixed effect models revealed baseline differences in subjective mind-wandering reports among middle-aged and older adults. However, longitudinally, middle-aged participants showed a significant increase in subjective mind-wandering, whereas older participants showed no change. Changes in mind-wandering could not be explained by attentional control ability or contemporaneous estimates of interest and perceived difficulty, but they were explained by baseline levels of conscientiousness. Objective measures of mind-wandering did not show these same patterns and were largely only associated with participants perceived difficulty. Our results build on previous cross-sectional research and suggest that incorporating longitudinal analyses into theories of ageing and mind-wandering and mind-wandering more broadly is important for refining these theories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Although perceived control is a well-established predictor of cognitive aging, less is known about how and under what developmental circumstances these beliefs about personal influence may protect against cognitive declines. Our study examined light physical activity (LPA) as an unexplored mechanism that may link changes in two facets of perceived control (personal mastery, perceived constraints) to longitudinal trajectories of cognitive functioning. We also examined whether mediated pathways were moderated by age (i.e., differed across the adult lifespan). We analyzed two-wave, 9-year data from the national Midlife in the United States Study ( = 2,456; = 56 years, range = 30-84; 56% female) using autoregressive mediation and moderated mediation models. Mediation models showed that changes in personal mastery and perceived constraints predicted episodic memory and executive functioning via self-reported change in LPA. Only the mediated effects of constraints remained significant in a model that included both mastery and constraints as predictors. Moderated mediation models showed that, for episodic memory, the mediated pathways were strongest in old age and emerged only for constraints: For older but not younger adults, declines in constraints were associated with less decline in episodic memory, as mediated by increases in LPA. Results were consistent in sensitivity analyses that controlled for levels and change in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Findings inform lifespan theories of control and provide initial evidence that change in a largely overlooked health behavior (LPA) may underlie the link between perceived constraints and cognitive functioning, with this pathway becoming more pronounced in late life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Past research shows that social networks get smaller with age. But not all types of relationships may shrink at the same rate or for similar reasons. In the present study, we used a unique data set from a sample of 235 men who were followed longitudinally for 71 years to examine how the general pattern of network shrinkage documented in previous research generalizes to the number of emotional support providers in people's networks. We additionally examined early-life predictors of the size of later-life support network. Growth curve analyses revealed that, mirroring the more general pattern of network shrinkage, emotional support networks shrink by as much as 50% between the ages of 30 and 90, reflecting an average reduction from two to one support providers. Examining the associations between prospectively collected measures of childhood family environment and later-life emotional support, we also found that men who grew up in warmer family environments had larger support networks in adulthood. In contrast, childhood family socioeconomic status was not connected to the size of emotional support networks later in life. The generalizability of this work is limited by the use of an archival all-male sample from the United States. Despite this limitation, these findings make important contributions to our understanding of adult socioemotional development and underscore the importance of prospectively collected longitudinal data in developmental research. Additional research is needed to examine the consequences of changing emotional support across the lifespan for health and well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Eating disorders (EDs) have historically been thought of as afflictions of younger women, but EDs do occur in midlife/older adults, and the incidence of EDs among older women may be increasing. The present study sought to examine outcomes for patients with anorexia nervosa needing to weight restore across four age groups: under 18, 18-25, 26-39, and 40+. Based on prior research, it was hypothesized that there would be no differences between the age groups in percent of expected body weight (%EBW) gained during treatment. Participants were 2,491 patients receiving treatment for an ED at a large multisite treatment facility offering higher levels of care. At this treatment facility, EBW is individualized for each patient, considering a patient's premorbid body weight and historical weight trends. Adult patients ages 26-39 ( = -3.58, < .001) and ages 40+ ( = -4.70, < .001) had significantly lower improvements in %EBW compared to adult patients ages 18-25. Child and adolescent patients (under 18) had significantly greater improvements in %EBW than adult patients ( = 14.30, < .001). Findings from the present study suggest that targeted treatments may need to be developed to increase weight gain in midlife/older adults. In addition, efforts may need to be strengthened to keep adults in treatment longer than they may initially want to, particularly when treatment and weight gain become difficult. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Sex differences in verbal and nonverbal emotion processing in older individuals are underexplored despite declining emotional performance with age. This study aimed to investigate the nature of sex differences in age-related decline in emotion perception, exploring modulatory effects on communication channels and emotion categories. Seventy-three older adults (43 female participants, aged 60-89 years) and 74 younger adults (37 female participants, aged 18-30 years) completed a task to recognize basic emotions (i.e., anger, happiness, neutrality, sadness) expressed by female or male encoders through verbal (i.e., semantic) and nonverbal (i.e., facial and prosodic) channels. Female participants consistently demonstrated an overall advantage in emotion perception and expression across both age cohorts. In older adults, this superiority was heightened in decoding angry and sad faces, as well as angry prosody and happy and sad semantics. However, older individuals exhibited decreased sensitivities to angry semantics, sad prosody, and neutral prosody from female encoders, whereas they showed heightened sensitivities to happy faces from female encoders and angry faces from male encoders. Both older and younger adults displayed age-related changes in sex interactions specific to emotional categories and channels. But neither own-sex nor opposite-sex bias was systematically observed across the two age groups. These results suggest that explicit emotion processing involves an intricate integration of individual and contextual differences, with significant age and sex interplay linked to specific emotions and channels. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Older adults, compared to younger adults, tend to prioritize positive information more and negative information less. We recently observed this "positivity effect" pattern in an emotion-induced blindness task, which measures attention allocated to task-irrelevant emotional stimuli in the way participants are distracted by them. Older adults were less distracted by negative images compared to younger adults. This could represent an age-related priority shift away from negative emotions. However, it could also be that older adults simply do not see negative images presented at a fast rate. A similar possibility is that older adults to fail to engage with negative stimuli because of their complex nature, rather than due to age-related changes in emotional preference per se. In the present study, we tested this possibility by manipulating the required degree of engagement with emotional distractors. Participants completed a modified emotion-induced blindness task, with emotional distractors that were either task irrelevant (younger: = 48; older: = 46) or task relevant (younger: = 48; older: = 45). The task relevance of distractors did not affect performance. Even though older adults could quickly perceive the negative images, they were less distracted by them compared to younger adults. Current theories of the positivity effect fail to fully account for these positivity effect patterns in attention, especially those that propose mechanisms requiring a substantial time to enact. The current results may require rethinking previous accounts of the positivity effect and highlight the benefits of probing the positivity effect in early cognitive processing stages. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).