Open science in dementia care embedded pragmatic clinical trials.
This article provides several recommendations to enhance the transparency and reporting rigor of ePCTs in dementia care and other chronic disease contexts. We illustrate these recommendations in the context of a recent pilot pragmatic trial known as the Porchlight Project. Porchlight provided training to volunteers who serve clients and caregivers to help them provide more “dementia capable” support. Notably this trial did not include a special effort to make use of open science practices. We discuss the benefits and costs had the Porchlight Project incorporated open science principles. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 20...
Source: Psychology and Aging - February 3, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Good clinical practice improves rigor and transparency: Lessons from the ACTIVE trial.
Clinical trials are governed by principles of good clinical practice (GCP), which can strengthen the achievement of rigor, reproducibility, and transparency in scientific research. Rigor, reproducibility, and transparency are key for producing findings with greater certainty. Clinical trials are closely supervised, often by a clinical trial coordinating center, data safety and monitoring board, and a funding agency, with policies that are a manifestation of GCP and support rigor, reproducibility, and transparency. The multisite Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) study is an example clini...
Source: Psychology and Aging - February 3, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
A tutorial on cognitive modeling for cognitive aging research.
This article provides a tutorial on how to fit and interpret cognitive models to measure age differences in cognitive processes. We work with an example of a two choice discrimination task and describe how to fit models in the highly flexible modeling software Stan. We describe how to use hierarchical modeling to estimate both group and individual effects simultaneously, and we detail model fitting in a Bayesian statistical framework, which, among other benefits, enables aging researchers to quantify evidence for null effects. We contend that more widespread use of cognitive modeling among cognitive aging researchers may b...
Source: Psychology and Aging - February 3, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Transparency, replicability, and discovery in cognitive aging research: A computational modeling approach.
Healthy aging is associated with deficits in performance on episodic memory tasks. Popular verbal theories of the mechanisms underlying this decrement have primarily focused on inferred changes in associative memory. However, performance on any task is the result of interactions between different neurocognitive mechanisms, such as perceptuomotor, memory, and decision-making processes. As a result, age-related differences in performance could arise from multiple processes, which could lead to incomplete or incorrect conclusions about the sources of aging effects. In addition, standard statistical comparisons of group-level ...
Source: Psychology and Aging - February 3, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Introduction to the special issue on transparency, replicability, and discovery in the psychological science of adult development and aging.
In accordance with recent calls for greater transparency and open science, the current special issue attends to the need for work addressing what this looks like within the field of aging and adult development. The papers in this special issue all provide valuable insights into multiple aspects of producing open and transparent research within the psychology of aging. This introduction provides an overview of the papers, as well as addresses the need for this special issue to specifically address issues within this field. We hope these works provide food for thought, and that they spark further discussion on what researche...
Source: Psychology and Aging - February 3, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Research practices for a robust psychological science of adult development and aging.
This first issue of 2022 marks the transition of Psychology and Aging in adopting a transparency and openness promotion (TOP) framework. The journal has always had high standards for theoretically meaningful research conducted with methodological and analytic rigor. As the Open Science movement has gathered steam, authors are increasingly submitting papers that fully meet TOP standards at Levels 1 or 2, and those who do not, have generally been quite happy to respond to the gentle nudges of the journal's editors. Thus, in practical terms, the changes at this point are actually quite modest. In what follows, Stine-Morrow ad...
Source: Psychology and Aging - February 3, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Are older adults more risky readers? Evidence from meta-analysis.
According to an influential account of aging effects on reading, older adults (65+ years) employ a more “risky” reading strategy compared to young adults (18–30 years), in which they attempt to compensate for slower processing by using lexical and contextual knowledge to guess upcoming (i.e., parafoveal) words more often. Consequently, while older adults may read more slowly, they might also skip words more often (by moving their gaze past words without fixating them), especially when these are of higher lexical frequency or more predictable from context. However, this characterization of aging effects on reading has...
Source: Psychology and Aging - January 31, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Arousal reappraisal in younger and older adults.
Prior research suggests individuals can reappraise autonomic arousal under stress to improve performance. However, it is unclear whether arousal reappraisal effects are apparent at all ages. Seventy-three younger and 47 older adults received guided instruction to be in a state of challenge or threat while completing a mental arithmetic task. In addition to reporting on coping appraisals during the task, participants’ physiological reactivity was assessed; changes in cardiac output (CO) and tonic skin conductance are reported. Participants in the challenge condition (compared to those in the threat condition) perceived gr...
Source: Psychology and Aging - January 27, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
A domain-differentiated approach to everyday emotion regulation from adolescence to older age.
This study contributes new insights into situational characteristics that are associated with emotion-regulation flexibility, showing that hassles domains are important for strategy selection, and that this holds from adolescence to old age. It also suggests that such defined emotion-regulation flexibility is not as strongly linked to emotion-regulation effectiveness as has been previously suggested. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology and Aging)
Source: Psychology and Aging - January 27, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
The influence of verbatim versus gist formatting on younger and older adults’ information acquisition and decision-making.
Fuzzy-Trace Theory suggests that decision makers encode gist representations (bottom-line meaning) and verbatim representations (details) of information but rely more on gist, a tendency that increases with age. The present study examined implications for age differences in information seeking and decision-making by presenting gist and verbatim formatted choice scenarios. Participants comprised 68 younger and 66 older adults. Predecisional information seeking, indices of decision outcomes and recall, and relevant covariates were assessed. In line with theory, older adults self-reported and demonstrated stronger preferences...
Source: Psychology and Aging - January 27, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Associations between social network components and cognitive domains in older adults.
Previous research shows that social network components are associated with cognitive function later in life. However, fewer studies consider different cognitive domains or disaggregate the social network by relationship type. Using data from 2,553 participants aged 65 or older in the Health and Retirement Study’s Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol, this study examined relationships between social network structure (i.e., size, contact frequency) and quality (i.e., support, strain) and performance in five cognitive domains (i.e., episodic memory, executive function, visuoconstruction, language, and processing speed)...
Source: Psychology and Aging - December 30, 2021 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Strength and vulnerability: Indirect effects of age on changes in occupational well-being through emotion regulation and physiological disease.
The strength and vulnerability integration (SAVI) model posits that development across the adult lifespan is accompanied by improvements in emotion regulation and declines in physiological flexibility. Due to these age-related changes, emotional well-being is expected to be higher among older (vs. younger) adults when they experience no or only minor stressors. In contrast, more intense stressors should lead to lower well-being among older adults. We develop and test a conceptual model based on the SAVI model in the work context that focuses on experienced incivility as a moderator of the indirect effects of employee age o...
Source: Psychology and Aging - December 30, 2021 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Relative effectiveness of general versus specific cognitive training for aging adults.
In the present study, we examined three experimental cognitive interventions, two targeted at training general cognitive abilities and one targeted at training specific instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) abilities, along with one active control group to compare benefits of these interventions beyond expectation effects, in a group of older adults (N = 230). Those engaged in general training did so with either the web-based brain game suite BrainHQ or the strategy video game Rise of Nations, while those trained on IADL skills completed instructional programs on driving and fraud awareness. Active control partici...
Source: Psychology and Aging - December 30, 2021 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Well-being trajectories of middle-aged and older adults and the corona pandemic: No “COVID-19 effect” on life satisfaction, but increase in depressive symptoms.
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has led to profound changes in individuals’ lives and might have meaningful implications for well-being. We investigated if and how two major indicators of well-being (life satisfaction and depressive symptoms) changed in Germany from a prepandemic measurement occasion (2017) to June/July 2020, the time of the fading first wave of COVID-19. This change was compared with prepandemic change between 2014 and 2017. We also analyzed whether change in well-being varied according to age, self-rated health, corona-specific attitudes, and subjective standard of living. Ten thousand seve...
Source: Psychology and Aging - December 30, 2021 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Emotional reactivity to daily stressors: Does stressor pile-up within a day matter for young-old and very old adults?
Over the past decade, many studies have reported individual differences in negative emotional reactions to daily stressful events. However, whether and how individual and age-related differences in emotional reactivity also depend on the temporal characteristics of stressors has received little attention. In this project, we focused on the temporal characteristics of stressor occurrence and examined the pile-up of stressors within a day—referring to multiple stressors encountered within a relatively narrow time window. To do so, we used data from 123 young-old (66–69 years, 47% women) and 47 very old adults (84–90 ye...
Source: Psychology and Aging - December 30, 2021 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
