Psychology Commons^™

An Examination Of The Relation Between Memory Self-Efficacy And Working Memory Within The Cognitive Reserve Framework, Genna Marie Mashinchi Ma

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Dementia has been found to negatively affect multiple aspects of cognitive functioning. Despite an increasing prevalence of cognitive decline, many aging adults do not experience reduced cognitive functioning. The reason as to why some experience cognitive decline and others do not is still unclear. One leading theory thought to explain this phenomenon is the cognitive reserve theory (CR), which proposes that certain lifestyle factors (e.g., educational attainment, occupational attainment, and leisure activity participation) prolong one’s cognitive functioning and reduce the risk of cognitive decline. Memory self-efficacy (MSE), defined as one’s beliefs in their memory ability, was found to be positively …

Assessing The Correlation Between The Socioeconomic Level And Cognitive Function Among Older Adults In Egypt, Macy Abougabal

Theses and Dissertations

The number of older adults is increasing worldwide at an unprecedented rate. Some countries began to understand the challenges of aging, while others are still at the stage of comprehending the true dimensions of the situation. There is a global focus on aging research to appropriately mitigate the negative impact of aging and cognitive decline. Not only that dementia add economic pressure on governments, it also increase the psychological and physical burden of the caregivers. Scholars have previously studied socioeconomic level in three variables, namely work, education, and income, and their relationship with cognitive function. It was concluded that the …

Moving Beyond Fulfillment: Wisdom Years Stories Of Passion, Perseverance, And Productivity, Kenneth A. Kiewra, Jessica Walsh, Chris Labenz

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Seven participants were interviewed to uncover how they remain so productive in their wisdom years, those typically marked by retirement. Participants included a leading educational psychologist, a renowned national television news anchor, a four-time national champion collegiate coach, the founder and former chief executive of Arbor Day Foundation, a university scholar turned playwright, and two female adventurers who quit their jobs, sold their possessions, and have lived a nomadic life, hiking thousands of miles throughout America. Their wisdom years stories describe how and why they shun retirement and remain productive. The article concludes with seven advice-laden conclusions for readers: (a) …

Neuroanatomy In Mild Cognitive Impairment: Relationship To Functional Skills, Treatment Expectancy, And Comorbid Depression, Sara Rushia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a neurocognitive disorder defined by cognitive decline in older adults. Although MCI has been studied for decades, there remain important areas to be explored in order to adequately characterize aspects of this disorder that provide information valuable for possible interventions and disease progression to dementia, including a better understanding of the neuroanatomical variables relevant to this disorder. Such neuroanatomical variables include cortical thickness, hippocampal volume, and white matter hyperintensities (WMHs). This dissertation consists of three separate studies aimed at addressing gaps in the literature on MCI in relation to brain morphometrics and under-studied characteristics involved …

Methodological Considerations For The Study Of Cognitive Reserve And Its Relationship To Cognitive Decline In Older Adults, Kerry A. Howard

All Dissertations

Cognitive reserve (CR) is a key construct in promoting healthy cognitive aging. Methodological inconsistencies have limited the ability for researchers to make broad conclusions about relevant life experiences that may build CR and delay cognitive decline. This dissertation explored notable issues within the operationalization of CR based on proxy life experiences by applying a systematic approach toward understanding the use of CR, as well as an understanding of consequences of inconsistent operationalization. The project had three aims: review and explore the association between various CR proxies utilized in the literature and develop a composite score for CR, describe differences in …

Neural Markers Of Musical Memory In Young And Older Adults, Avital Sternin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Memory for music can be preserved in the presence of neurodegenerative disorders even when other memories are forgotten. However, understanding how the brain remembers music has proven difficult despite decades of research. The central goal of this thesis was to elucidate the neural correlates of musical memory by exploring how the presence of language and music information affect the way young and older adults remember music. To that end, I 1) used a controlled training paradigm to familiarize participants with novel stimuli that manipulated the presence of language and music, and 2) collected functional magnetic resonance imaging data to compare …

Do Emotion Words Influence Age Effects In Delayed Match-To-Sample Performance For Emotional Faces?, Ying-Han Li

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Age differences are apparent in using verbal labels of emotion to categorize emotion face stimuli. Particularly, older adults have more difficulty detecting emotion cues like anger and fear relative to younger adults, but seem to have less difficulty with disgust cues. However, age differences are diminished in situations when participants are limited to two possible emotion choices or are required to simply match stimuli based on emotion cues without the use of labels. One question that emerges from the disparities in these findings is the role that emotion labels themselves play in driving possible age differences in emotion perception. The …

Exploring The Mechanisms That Underlie The Benefits Of Retrieval Practice In Younger And Older Adults, Ruth A. Shaffer

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The testing effect—or the benefit of retrieval practice to later memory—is often considered to be a recollection-related phenomenon. However, recent work (Shaffer & McDermott, 2020) has observed a benefit of testing to both recollection and familiarity processing on both immediate and delayed final tests. Further, although aging populations show marked declines in recollection, older and younger adults often benefit from testing to a similar degree (Meyer & Logan, 2013). This finding suggests that the testing effect in older adults may function via relatively preserved familiarity and lends further support to the notion that the testing effect does not function solely …

To Examine The Effects Of Exercise & Instructional Based Interventions On Executive Functioning, Motor Learning & Emotional Intelligence Abilities Among Older Adults, Lavanya Rajesh Kumar

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Motor skills are a vital part of our life, and there might be situations where we will be required to either learn a new skill or relearn a known one. We examined the effectiveness of two different interventions - eccentric exercise and motivation-based instructions on enhancing the ability of older adults to learn a novel motor skill. Exercise intervention studies have shown that as little as 12 weeks of exercise can lead to improvements in both physical fitness and cognitive function in older adults, particularly executive control. But it is still unclear whether those improvements translate to improvements in other …

Age-Related Losses In Cardiac Autonomic Activity During A Daytime Nap, Pin-Chun Chen, Negin Sattari, Lauren N. Whitehurst, Sara C. Mednick

Psychology Faculty Publications

In healthy, young individuals, a reduction in cardiovascular output and a shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic (vagal) dominance is observed from wake into stages of nocturnal and daytime sleep. This cardiac autonomic profile, measured by heart rate variability (HRV), has been associated with significant benefits for cardiovascular health. Aging is associated with decreased nighttime sleep quality and lower parasympathetic activity during both sleep and resting. However, it is not known whether age-related dampening of HRV extends to daytime sleep, diminishing the cardiovascular benefits of naps in the elderly. Here, we investigated this question by comparing the autonomic activity profile between …

The Effects Of Aging On Attention In Associative Learning, Katie Wheeler

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In this study we investigated how aging affects attention to predictive and uncertain cues during associative learning. According to Mackintosh’s theory of predictiveness (1975), attention will be allocated to cues that most reliably predict an outcome. An opposing theory of uncertainty from Pearce and Hall (1980) suggest attention will be allocated to cues whose outcomes are uncertain. Although these theories are contradictory, both are well supported in the associative learning literature. There is evidence that young and older adults give more attention to cues that are predictive compared to nonpredictive cues (Mutter et al., 2019), and that young adults respond …

The Biological, Psychological, Cognitive, And Social Perspectives On Aging: The Design Of A Healthy Aging Program For Older Adults, Melissa Santiago

Dissertations

Aging is an inevitable process, accompanied by changes in physiological, cognitive, psychological, and social facets. Researchers have investigated the physiological, cognitive, psychological, and social risk factors associated with aging and have encouraged the use of physical activity, cognitive training, and dietary interventions to alleviate risk factors. However, holistic programs dedicated to promoting successful aging among older adults are uncommon. This review sought to promote successful aging by identifying physiological, cognitive, psychological, and social risk factors that affect older adults and develop a comprehensive program to holistically mitigate these risk factors. Risk factors associated with unsuccessful aging include the development of …

Off-Topic Verbosity And Sustained Attention Among Young Adult And Older Adult Age Cohorts, Jessica H. Helphrey

Psychology and Counseling Theses

Off-topic verbosity (OTV) is tangential discourse with excessive and irrelevant information. Older adults have been historically labeled as having high OTV, and research has suggested that high OTV in older adults may be linked with cognitive decline. While past studies have utilized brief cognitive measures to further expound upon the links between cognition and OTV, studies have lacked consistency and lengthy measures. This study sought to elucidate the relationship between OTV and cognition in both older adult and young adult age cohorts utilizing a sustained attention measure. Young adults (n = 61; age range: 18-28, M = 20.57, SD = …

Quality Of Sleep, Stress, And Exercise: Effects Of Environmental And Lifestyle Factors On Spatial Navigation In Older Adults, Hannah Maybrier

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: With increasing age, many adults experience reduced spatial navigation ability, with the most prominent reductions in tasks dependent on the hippocampus. Hippocampal dysfunction may be linked to age-related increases in sleep fragmentation, which results in reduced neurogenesis and long-term potentiation. This project aims to determine if age-related reductions in hippocampal-dependent navigation ability and strategy selection are mediated by impaired sleep. Further, we propose that the effects of sleep on navigation are moderated by psychological stress and physical activity. Methods: 36 older (m: 70, sd: 7) and 33 younger (m: 20, sd: 1.5) adults recorded one week of sleep via …

The Project Talent Twin And Sibling Study: Zygosity And New Data Collection, Carol A. Prescott, Ellen E. Walters, Thalida Em Arpawong, Catalina Zavala, Tara L. Gruenewald, Margaret Gatz

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

The Project Talent Twin and Sibling (PTTS) study includes 4481 multiples and their 522 nontwin siblings from 2233 families. The sample was drawn from Project Talent, a U.S. national longitudinal study of 377,000 individuals born 1942–1946, first assessed in 1960 and representative of U.S. students in secondary school (Grades 9–12). In addition to the twins and triplets, the 1960 dataset includes 84,000 siblings from 40,000 other families. This design is both genetically informative and unique in facilitating separation of the ‘common’ environment into three sources of variation: shared by all siblings within a family, specific to twin-pairs, and associated with …

How Specific Is Domain-Specific Slowing? Evidence For A General Form Of A Domain-Specific Mechanism, Cynthia C. Flores

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Faces are special not just because our ability to quickly and accurately process faces is integral for social functioning throughout our lives, but also because faces are considered a unique class of visual stimuli (i.e., faces rely more on holistic processing than objects and there exist specialized, face-specific regions in the brain). Behavioral and neuropsychological research point to face processing as dissociable from other kinds of visuospatial processing. Although there is evidence that neural specificity for faces is retained in older adults, there is also evidence that age-related impairments are greater in face processing, relative to object processing. Using a …

Dissociable Effects Of Monetary, Liquid, And Social Incentives On Motivation Across The Adult Life Span, Jennifer Crawford

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Humans are social creatures and, as such, can be motivated by aspects of social life, like approval from others, to guide decision-making in everyday life. Indeed, a common view in the aging literature is that older adults have a stronger orientation towards socioemotional goals or incentives, relative to other incentive modalities, like money, because of changing motivational priorities in older adulthood. In prior work, however, we found that older adults actually showed greater effects of monetary relative to primary (liquid) incentives, suggesting alternative interpretations of impaired motivational integration and/or slower adaptation to incentive conditions. The current study tested these alternatives, …

Home-Based Cognitive Monitoring: The Role Of Personality And Predictors Of Adherence And Satisfaction, Nasreen A. Sadeq

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the last several decades, a growing awareness of the benefits of regular screening for common health conditions, such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases, has paved the way for preventative screenings to become routine in medical settings. Given that cognitive impairment is frequently reported as the number one worry of older adults, home-based cognitive monitoring may be an innovative solution that allows middle aged and older adults to take an active role in monitoring an important aspect of their health. Although several home-based cognitive monitoring programs have been validated for use in clinical and home-based settings, the Cogstate Brief Battery …

The Revelation Effect In Autobiographical Memory, Vincent A. Medina

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The revelation effect is a memory illusion in recognition memory where items are more likely to be considered old if they are immediately preceded by a cognitive task (for a review, see Abfalg, Bernstein, & Hockley, 2017). Recent research has shown that the revelation effect appears in past and future episodic judgments so long as the tasks are autobiographical in nature (Westerman, Miller, & Lloyd, 2017). Aging is a factor that has not yet been studied in the revelation effect literature in terms of autobiographical memory. It has implications because of aging’s significant impact on mental time travel. During this …

Exploring Age-Related Metamemory Differences Using Modified Brier Scores And Hierarchical Clustering, Chelsea Parlett

Computational and Data Sciences (MS) Theses

Older adults (OAs) typically experience memory failures as they age. However, with some exceptions, studies of OAs’ ability to assess their own memory functions– Metamemory (MM)– find little evidence that this function is susceptible to age-related decline. Our study examines OAs’ and young adults’ (YAs) MM performance and strategy use. Groups of YAs (N = 138) and OAs (N = 79) performed a MM task that required participants to place bets on how likely they were to remember words in a list. Our analytical approach includes hierarchical clustering, and we introduce a new measure of MM—the modified Brier—in order to …

The Influence Of Aging, Gaze Direction, And Context On Emotion Discrimination Performance, Alyssa Renee Minton

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study examined how younger and older adults differ in their ability to discriminate between pairs of emotions of varying degrees of similarity when presented with an averted or direct gaze in either a neutral, congruent, or incongruent emotional context. For Task 1, participants were presented with three blocks of emotion pairs (i.e., anger/disgust, sadness/disgust, and fear/disgust) and were asked to indicate which emotion was being expressed. The actors’ gaze direction was manipulated such that emotional facial expressions were depicted with a direct gaze or an averted gaze. For Task 2, the same stimuli were placed into emotional contexts (e.g., …

That Note Sounds Wrong! Age-Related Effects In Processing Of Musical Expectation, Andrea R. Halpern, Ioanna Zioga, Martin Shankleman, Job Lindsen, Marcus T. Pearce, Joydeep Bhattacharya

Andrea Halpern

Part of musical understanding and enjoyment stems from the ability to accurately predict what note (or one of a small set of notes) is likely to follow after hearing the first part of a melody. Selective violation of expectations can add to aesthetic response but radical or frequent violations are likely to be disliked or not comprehended. In this study we investigated whether a lifetime of exposure to music among untrained older adults would enhance their reaction to unexpected endings of unfamiliar melodies. Older and younger adults listened to melodies that had expected or unexpected ending notes, according to Western …

Absolute Pitch In Naturalistic Singing: A Commentary On Olthof Et Al., Andrea R. Halpern

Andrea Halpern

The parent article looks at pitch stability in an archive of folksongs recorded over several decades. Some evidence for pitch stability was found. Here, I consider some additional aspects of the archive that could be examined, offer some extensions to relevant laboratory studies, and consider some inherent strengths and limitations of the naturalistic, archival approach.

Manipulating Belief Bias Across The Lifespan, William D. Carney

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In today’s political climate, when basic facts and reasoning are seemingly up for debate, it is increasingly important to be able to identify well-reasoned arguments, regardless of one’s political leanings, and to retain this skill throughout the lifespan. Research has shown, however, a persistent belief bias—a tendency to judge an argument’s validity based on its conclusion’s agreement with one’s beliefs, rather than its logical quality. Other findings suggest that belief bias can be reduced by instruction to avoid belief bias. The current project seeks to explore whether older adults, believed to be more prone to biased reasoning, respond differently to …

The Consequences Of Processing Of Goal-Irrelevant Information During The Stroop Task In Younger And Older Adults, Jessica Nicosia

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent evidence from memory paradigms indicates that older adults can sometimes benefit more from processing goal-irrelevant information than younger adults, however these studies have often failed to simultaneously provide evidence of age-related control deficits. In the present experiments, participants initially studied a list of words. They then received a color-naming Stroop task where neutral words were either previously studied or new words. Across three experiments, participants were given different types of memory tests to examine the lingering effects of the neutral words during color-naming in younger and older adults. The results from all three experiments (including an attempted replication study) …

Exercise Engagement And Longitudinal Change In Alzheimer's Disease Biomarkers, Regional Brain Structure, And Cognitive Functioning, Marta Stojanovic

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Hearing And Seeing A Speaker: How Perceptual And Cognitive Factors Modulate The Dynamics Of Audiovisual Speech Perception, Elina Kaplan

Doctoral Dissertations

In face-to-face conversations, listeners process and combine speech information obtained from hearing and seeing the speaker talk. Audiovisual speech typically leads to more robust recognition of speech, as it provides more information for recognition but also as it helps listeners adjust to speaker idiosyncrasies. The goal of the current thesis was to examine how certain perceptual and cognitive factors modulate how listeners use visual speech to facilitate momentary speech perception and to adjust to a speaker’s idiosyncrasies. Results showed that (older) listeners’ sensitivity to cross-modal synchrony is related to the size of the audiovisual interactions during early perceptual processing. Furthermore, …

Gene-Environment Interaction: Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (Bdnf) As A Moderating Factor For The Effects Of Exercise And Diet On Cognitive And Mental Health: The Cache County Study On Memory In Aging, Chelsea L. Sanders

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Cache County Study on Memory in Aging, funded by the National Institute on Aging, studied longitudinal changes in memory and aging over 12 years’ follow-up in a population-based sample of 5,092 older adults in semirural Cache County, UT. Among the extensive interview procedures, researchers collected information regarding the participants’ demographics, health, genetic factors, diet, physical activity, and cognitive abilities. This study has allowed researchers to investigate how genetic and modifiable lifestyle factors interact to predict health, cognitive function, and psychological wellbeing in older adults.

Diet and exercise are important lifestyle factors in maintaining cognitive health and psychological wellbeing throughout …

Just Don't Do It!: A Comparison Of Strategies For Reducing Commission Errors In Older And Younger Adults, Emily Streeper

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Prospective memory (PM) commission errors occur when an individual erroneously repeats an intention that is finished and therefore no longer relevant (e.g., accidentally taking a medication one no longer needs to take). Commission errors have been observed in younger and older adults with age exacerbating commission error risk in select conditions. Only one prior study has used the finished paradigm to investigate the use of explicit strategies to reduce commission error rates in older adults. Bugg, Scullin, and Rauvola (2016) found that forgetting practice, an experience-based strategy, minimized commission errors to floor levels but a preparation-based strategy was ineffective. The …

Assessment For Mild Cognitive Impairment: Striving For Best Practice, Julie Leigh Dalmasso

Dissertations

This dissertation is a series of three studies aimed at determining the best assessment practices for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) that can employed by speech-language pathologists (SLPs). The first study was non-experimental and descriptive examining whether three commonly used assessment instruments yielded similar categorical results. The data were analyzed to determine whether the Eight-Item Interview to Differentiate Aging and Dementia (AD8), the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), and the Cognitive-Linguistic Quick Test (CLQT) identified the same participants from a neurotypical sample as having cognitive deficits. Very little agreement was found amongst the three tools.

Study two was modified to include two …