scholarly journals Effects of aging and emotional valence on item directed forgetting and source attributions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara N. Gallant

Two experiments investigated the effects of aging and emotion on intentional forgetting. Experiment 1 compared 36 young (aged 18-28, M = 20.22, SD = 3.12) and 36 older adults (aged 65-85, M = 71.53, SD = 5.44) on item directed forgetting and source attributions (i.e., assigning a 'remember', 'forget', or 'new' tag during recognition) of positive, negative, and neutral words. Older adults' directed forgetting was reduced for positive words and their source attributions were differentially affected by emotion. Emotion had no effect on young adults' performance. Experiment 2 examined the role of attention in older adults' intentional forgetting. Thirty-six older adults (aged 65-91, M = 73.92, SD = 7.55) completed an emotional item directed forgetting task that incorporated a probe-detection task during encoding to assess the allocation of attention across valence conditions. Older adults again showed reduced directed forgetting for positive words and emotional effects in source attributions; however, results from the probe-detection task indicated the older adults' attention may not have been influenced by the emotional tone of stimuli during encoding.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara N. Gallant

Two experiments investigated the effects of aging and emotion on intentional forgetting. Experiment 1 compared 36 young (aged 18-28, M = 20.22, SD = 3.12) and 36 older adults (aged 65-85, M = 71.53, SD = 5.44) on item directed forgetting and source attributions (i.e., assigning a 'remember', 'forget', or 'new' tag during recognition) of positive, negative, and neutral words. Older adults' directed forgetting was reduced for positive words and their source attributions were differentially affected by emotion. Emotion had no effect on young adults' performance. Experiment 2 examined the role of attention in older adults' intentional forgetting. Thirty-six older adults (aged 65-91, M = 73.92, SD = 7.55) completed an emotional item directed forgetting task that incorporated a probe-detection task during encoding to assess the allocation of attention across valence conditions. Older adults again showed reduced directed forgetting for positive words and emotional effects in source attributions; however, results from the probe-detection task indicated the older adults' attention may not have been influenced by the emotional tone of stimuli during encoding.


1995 ◽  
Vol 177 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank M. Perna ◽  
Bart M. Lerner ◽  
Michael T. Yura

Historically, the major theories of career development have directly or indirectly implicated the role of older adults in the personal and professional development of young adults. Increasily, attention has been focused on explaining the dynamics and effects of these mentoring relationships. In this article we review and discuss the research relating to mentoring and university faculty career development.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S305-S305
Author(s):  
Jenessa C Steele ◽  
Amanda Chappell ◽  
Rachel Scott

Abstract Emotional responses to disrespect tend to be negative (Hawkins, 2015). Little is known about how responses to disrespect vary across age groups and relationship closeness. It is unknown whether older adults have more emotional protection against disrespectful experiences, or are more deeply affected due to relationship closeness. Overall, we might expect that older adults react less negatively to disrespect compared to young adults, as they are more-skilled emotion regulators (Carstensen, 1991; English & Carstensen, 2014). We aimed to explore if, and under which circumstances, older adults are more or less sensitive to disrespect compared to younger adults. Three hundred participants responded to six scenarios illustrating ignored disrespect. Participants were randomly assigned to close or distant relationship disrespect scenarios. Relationship closeness was first determined by requesting participants identify a person in each layer of Kahn and Antonucci’s (1980) Social Convoy Model. Identified names were then automatically inserted into the six scenarios. Emotional responses and sensitivity to each scenario were recorded. Participants in the close condition reported more sensitivity to disrespect and negative emotions than participants in the distant condition. Females reported more sensitivity to disrespect and negative emotions than males. We did not find overwhelming support for age differences in responses to disrespect. A single scenario indicated younger participants more sensitive to disrespect than older participants. Findings suggest it is more hurtful to be disrespected by someone close to you and females may be more sensitive to disrespect than males. More research investigating the role of age in disrespect is needed.


Author(s):  
Timothy D. Lee ◽  
Laurie R. Wishart ◽  
Jason E. Murdoch

ABSTRACTAlthough aging is normally associated with declines in motor performance, recent evidence suggests that older adults suffer no loss in some measures of bimanual coordination relative to younger adults. Two hypotheses for this finding were compared in the present research. One hypothesis was based on the assumption that these coordination patterns are automatic and relatively impervious to the effects of aging. An alternative explanation is that older adults maintain this level of bimanual coordination at a cost of increased attention demand. These hypotheses were tested in an experiment in which bimanual coordination patterns (in-phase and anti-phase) were paced at two metronome frequencies (1 and 2 Hz), either alone or together, with serial performance of an attention-demanding task (adding 3s to a two-digit number at a 1 Hz pace). The results of the study provided some support for both hypotheses. The automaticity view was supported only for the coordination patterns at the 1 Hz metronome frequency. Support for an attention allocation hypothesis was shown in the observed-movement frequency data, as older adults tended to sacrifice movement frequency at the 2 Hz metronome pace in order to maintain performance in the movement and counting tasks. These findings are discussed relative to recent accounts of the role of automaticity in the absence of age-related differences in the performance of cognitive tasks.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uppunda Ajith Kumar ◽  
A. V. Sangamanatha ◽  
Jai Vikas

The purpose of this study was to assess the temporal processing and speech perception abilities in older adults who were practicing meditation for more than five years. Participants were comprised of three groups, 30 young adults (“YA”) in the age range of 20–30 years, 30 older adults in the age range of 50–65 years who practiced meditation for a period of five years or more (effective meditators “EM”), and 51 age matched older adults who did not have any experience of meditation (non-meditators “NM”). Temporal processing was evaluated using gap detection in noise, duration discrimination, modulation detection, and backward masking and duration pattern tests. Speech perception was measured in presence of a four-talker babble at −5 dB signal to noise ratio and with the vocoded stimuli. Results revealed that EM group performed significantly better than NM group in all psychophysical and speech perception tasks except in gap detection task. In the gap detection task, two groups did not differ significantly. Furthermore, EM group showed significantly better modulation detection thresholds compared to YA. Results of the study demonstrate that the practice of meditation not only offsets the decline in temporal and speech processing abilities due to aging process but also improves the ability to perceive the modulations compared to young adults.


2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trinidad Ruiz-Gallego-Largo ◽  
Teresa Simón ◽  
Aurora G. Suengas

In contrast to previous studies which addressed separately memory for source and referent, the present experiment analyzes the effects of aging on memory for both, source and referent. The experiment simulated a conversation between two people exchanging descriptors of themselves and the other speaker (e.g., “I am helpful,” “you are capable”). Participants (N = 60) were divided into two age groups: younger (M = 23.47 years old, SD = 2.37), older (M = 70.30 years old, SD = 3.73). Recall, recognition, and accuracy in identifying source (e.g., “who said helpful?”) and referent (e.g., “about whom was capable said?”) were analyzed. Younger and older adults recalled and recognized equally well information read by the experimenter about herself, but only young adults showed better memory for the descriptors they read about themselves. Older adults were impaired in source monitoring, but not in reference discrimination. Normal referent discrimination in older adults is attributed to the fact that the referent forms part of the content of the episode, whereas who spoke it is part of its context, and older adults tend to show greater deficits in context than in content memory. These results are explained within the source and reality monitoring framework.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Audunsdottir ◽  
Daniel S Quintana

Older adults have been neglected in biobehavioral oxytocin research. Emerging research indicates that oxytocin signaling activity fluctuates over the lifespan, which suggests that results from studies investigating youth and young adults cannot be easily generalized to older adults. The recruitment of a wider age range of research participants using a variety of research tools is required to uncover the role of the oxytocin signaling system over the lifespan and may reveal novel treatment target candidates in older adults, beyond social cognition and behavior.


1997 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 1107-1122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurie R. Wishart ◽  
Timothy D. Lee

Although there is evidence for age-related changes in both cognition and motor control, very little is known about the effect of age on learning of new motor skills. The present experiment addressed the interaction between aging and the role of knowledge of results (KR) on a motor learning task. Using a three-segment task on which each segment had specific timing goals, three different manipulations of relative frequency of information about performance were compared in younger and older adults. The three conditions were (a) 100% KR in which information about performance on each segment was provided after every trial, (b) 67% KR in which the performance information was faded over trials, and (c) 67% KR in which the performance information was faded over the segments within each trial. Following 90 acquisition trials, all subjects performed retention, transfer, and reacquisition tests. There were age-related differences for movement accuracy and consistency on acquisition and on the retention tests but not on the transfer test. However, none of these differences interacted with the frequency of KR manipulations. Surprisingly, there was no effect due to the fading schedules of KR. In general, these results indicated that younger and older adults use KR in a similar way to learn a motor skill.


eNeuro ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. ENEURO.0022-21.2021
Author(s):  
Sebastian Scholz ◽  
Stephan Dutke ◽  
Niko A. Busch

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