Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Tavr In Older Adults: Moving Toward A Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment And Away From Chronological Age, Abdulla A Damluji, Gwen Bernacki, Jonathan Afilalo, Radmila Lyubarova, Ariela R Orkaby, Min Ji Kwak, Scott Hummel, James N Kirkpatrick, Mathew S Maurer, Nanette Wenger, Michael W Rich, Dae Hyun Kim, Roberta Y Wang, Daniel E Forman, Ashok Krishnaswami

Journal Articles

Calcific aortic stenosis can be considered a model for geriatric cardiovascular conditions due to a confluence of factors. The remarkable technological development of transcatheter aortic valve replacement was studied initially on older adult populations with prohibitive or high-risk for surgical valve replacement. Through these trials, the cardiovascular community has recognized that stratification of these chronologically older adults can be improved incrementally by invoking the concept of frailty and other geriatric risks. Given the complexity of the aging process, stratification by chronological age should only be the initial step but is no longer sufficient to optimally quantify cardiovascular and noncardiovascular risk. …

Adult Age Differences In Response To Sociomoral Violations, Alyssa R. Minton

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Moral judgments and emotional reactions to sociomoral violations are heavily impacted by a perpetrator’s intentions, as malicious intent poses a threat to social harmony. Given that older adults are more motivated to maintain interpersonal harmony relative to younger adults, older adults may be more reactive to malicious intentions. In five studies, I investigated adult age differences in moral judgments and emotional reactions to sociomoral violations. In Studies 1-3, participants read scenarios in which a perpetrator either (a) desired to harm another but nothing happened, or (b) harmed another accidentally without malicious intent. Study 2 incorporated additional scenarios designed to evoke …

An Ewas Of Dementia Biomarkers And Their Associations With Age, African Ancestry, And Ptsd, Mark W. Miller, Erika J. Wolf, Xiang Zhao, Mark W. Logue, Sage E. Hawn

Psychology Faculty Publications

Background

Large-scale cohort and epidemiological studies suggest that PTSD confers risk for dementia in later life but the biological mechanisms underlying this association remain unknown. This study examined this question by assessing the influences of PTSD, APOE ε4 genotypes, DNA methylation, and other variables on the age- and dementia-associated biomarkers Aβ40, Aβ42, GFAP, NfL, and pTau-181 measured in plasma. Our primary hypothesis was that PTSD would be associated with elevated levels of these markers.

Methods

Analyses were based on data from a PTSD-enriched cohort of 849 individuals. We began by performing factor analyses of the biomarkers, the results of which …

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 …

Illness Intrusiveness And Psychosocial Adjustment Among Older Adults With Multimorbidity, Irina Mindlis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Given the high prevalence of multimorbidity (MM) among older adults and the exponential growth of the older adult U.S. population, identifying factors that can lessen depressive symptoms and improve quality of life (QOL) in this population is timely and important. While it is well established that MM is associated with greater depressive symptoms and poorer QOL (Li et al., 2016; Makovski et al., 2019; Marengoni et al., 2011; Read et al., 2017), the mechanisms underlying these relationships remain understudied. The illness intrusiveness model (Devins et al., 1984) proposes that stressors posed by diseases (disease-related factors) and their treatments (treatment-related factors) …

Examining Age-Related Enhancement Of Multisensory Gain: The Role Of Sensory Decline And Inverse Effectiveness, Laura C. Schneeberger

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

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, producing 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. Through a combination of stimulus-matched and perception-matched tasks, I found that older adults exhibit enhanced multisensory gain at low …

Investigating The Roles Of The Dorsal And Ventral Striatum In Humor Comprehension And Appreciation Throughout Health, Aging, And Parkinson’S Disease, Maggie Prenger

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Humor processing is thought to involve two distinct components. The first, humor comprehension, involves detecting and resolving incongruities that are present within a humorous stimulus. This is related to cognitive processes such as ambiguity resolution, response inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, functions that are mediated in part by the dorsal portion of the striatum (DS). Humor appreciation, on the other hand, refers to the subjective amusement and mirth that one experiences in response to a joke. This is related to reward processing, which implicates the ventral portion of the striatum (VS). Across three separate studies, we investigated the involvement …

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 …

The Age Of Connection: Interdependent Self-Construal Links Age And Prosociality, Jason Snyder

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Theories of aging have major implications for age differences in the self-concept across the adult lifespan that remain largely untested. Here, I propose a new perspective that draws from prominent aging theories to argue that people come to adopt a more interdependent self-construal with age as social environments become increasingly interdependent. Accordingly, I explain how ontogenetic development across the adult lifespan may emphasize interdependent social environments and subsequently encourage one to adopt a more interdependent self, explore how this perspective dovetails with prominent aging theories, and apply this perspective within the context of aging and prosocial behavior to support three …

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) …

Predictive Abilities Of Neuropsychological Measures On Functional Outcomes In The Mild Cognitive Impairment (Mci) And Dementia Populations, Morgan Bare

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

During the aging process, a decline in ability to perform everyday tasks is commonly observed. This is increasingly so for those with dementia and is a diagnostic requirement. These daily tasks require certain cognitive skills which can be measured by various neuropsychological measures. The purpose of this study is to examine which neuropsychological measures are able to detect various deficits in self-reported activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia. It is hypothesized that Trail Making Test– B (TMT-B) would be the most sensitive predictor in functional …

Changing Public Perception Of Dementia: The Effect And Credibility Of Three Informational Models., Diana Hedrick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Background: Since the 1970s, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia have been portrayed in a medicalized, symptom-focused manner to help spread awareness, improve diagnosis, and push for treatment research. In recent decades, there has been movement towards a biopsychosocial, person-centered approach that considers social and psychological factors that interact with biological diseases processes. Common biopsychosocial approaches retain an emphasis on deficits and symptoms. New research has integrated positive psychology constructs and dementia. This integration of positive psychology principles and dementia care and research has the potential to more accurately capture the experience of having dementia. Objectives: This dissertation tested how the portrayal …

The Role Of Autobiographical Memory Recall In Reappraisal Efficacy And Effort Across Age, Irina Orlovsky

Masters Theses

Socioemotional theories posit that the experience of overcoming unique life challenges over a lifetime enhances self-efficacy and emotional resilience among older adults. Older adults demonstrate greater emotional well-being and motivation to regulate emotions than younger adults, but specific regulatory mechanisms supporting late-life emotional resilience remain unclear. Cognitive reappraisal is an effective but cognitively demanding emotion regulation strategy and shows mixed efficacy in later-life. While a growing repertoire of autobiographical memories may be a resource with age, the role of autobiographical recall in momentary reappraisal has never been tested empirically. In this online study, older and younger adults were trained to …

Correlates Of Psychological Well-Being In Older Adults With Treatment-Resistant Depression, Selmi Kallmi

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that are associated with psychological well-being in older adults with late-life depression and determine if social participation moderates and/or mediates these relationships. This dissertation study utilized secondary pre-treatment data collected from the “Optimum: Optimizing Depression Treatment in Older Adults” study (Cristancho et al. (2019). Community dwelling older adults (N = 369) were included if they currently met criteria for MDD, had failed at least two prior trials of MDD medication treatment, and were able to visit the study site to participate in cognitive and physical functioning assessments. Hierarchical multiple regressions …

Editorial: Exploring The Technological Needs Of Older Adults: Advances In Design, Functionality, User Experience, And Age-Related Cognitive And Sensory Aids To Facilitate Adoption, Alex Chaparro, Cristina Cachero, Joanne M. Wood

Publications

The rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, robotics, communication, and automation have been the catalyst for the development of a host of new technologies that allow older users to monitor their own health (via wearables), maintain their independence (semi-autonomous driving), social connections (smart home devices), and compensate for a range of age-related sensory changes (hearing aids, smart glasses, augmented displays, etc.). Less well understood is how older users get acquainted with these innovations, how their design and functionality need to be adapted to improve older users’ performance and experience, and which factors and interventions help or hinder technology adoption and use …

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 …

Changes In Audiovisual Integration In Aging, Alyssa S. Lynn

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

The proposed study will examine changes in audiovisual integration between younger and older adults. Audiovisual integration enables us to associate and bind related auditory and visual information and experience it as a single percept (Spence, 2007). Being able to properly integrate is crucial in our everyday lives. When perceiving speech, audiovisual integration binds visual information from lip movements with auditory information from the speaker's utterances so that speech can be perceived multimodally. With age, our auditory and visual sensory acuity tends to decline with audiovisual integration being impacted as a result (Brooks et al., 2018; Mahoney et al., 2011). We …

Does Anxiety Sensitivity Mediate Age-Related Differences In Anxiety In Middle-Aged And Older Adults?, Katherine F. Peterson

Theses and Dissertations

Anxiety is a mental illness that can have significant deleterious impacts on an individual’s functioning. Although anxiety has been studied in older adults, there is conflicting evidence on differences in anxiety as a function of age. Anxiety sensitivity is a construct that is positively related to anxiety but has limited research in older adults. Extant literature suggests that older adults experience less anxiety sensitivity than do younger adults. According to Socioemotional Selectivity Theory, this may be due to older adults letting go of the things that make them anxious. The current study proposed that age impacts self-rated anxiety such that …

The Coping Strategies Of Older Adults With Age Related Vision Loss (Arvl) – A Narrative Account, Zakara J. Stampp

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The goal of this study was to share the stories of older adults with age-related vision loss (ARVL) and how they have coped to maintain meaningful occupational engagement. Grounded in a constructivist paradigm, data collection and analysis were guided by the narrative inquiry methodology. The participants consisted of six older adults aged 60 or older, diagnosed with one of the following ARVL conditions: macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and/or glaucoma. Participants were recruited from vision loss non-profit organizations such as the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) and the Alliance for Equity of Blind Canadians (AEBC). One older adult was …

The Role Of Intimate Partnership Among Older Adults On Pain Severity And The Engagement In Preventative Health Behaviors, Lauren Fox

Doctoral Dissertations

Bodily pain is a frequently disabling condition among older adults, which has broad biopsychosocial implications on health and wellbeing. As adults age, diminishing support systems can result in poor health outcomes and the presence of an intimate partner relationship can positively impact physical health, including influencing pain severity. The number of adults in the United States over 65 is expected to double by 2030, meaning that a significant portion of the population will be entering a stage of increased healthcare utilization. Therefore, behaviors which improve physical health will only become increasingly important over time. While previous research has pointed to …

Quality Of Life And End-Of-Life Plans: The Inclusion Of Sexual Health., Jacinta Dickens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sex and intimacy are important components of quality of life (Syme, 2014). Previous research found a positive relation between quality of life and sexual satisfaction (Chao et al., 2011), but how this relation may or may not impact end-of-life plans was unexplored. This study explored if the relation between quality of life and sexual satisfaction determined if community-dwelling middle-aged or older adults in the US have or was willing to incorporate sexual health within their formal or informal end-oflife plan. Correlation analyses examined cross-sectional survey data. Findings revealed a statistically significant correlation between quality of life and sexual satisfaction, no …

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 …

Development And Testing Of The Mueller Assessment Of Transition (Mat): A Tool For Measuring Older Adults' Wellbeing When Transitioning Into Assisted Living Facilities, Kaitlin Mueller

All Dissertations

Transitions into assisted living facilities (ALFs) may influence older adults’ wellbeing. Positive influences on older adults’ wellbeing are referred to as adjustment strategies, whereas negative influences are called constraints to wellbeing. Theoretical underpinnings for these influences are found in the Hierarchical Leisure Constraints Theory and the Transition Process Framework. Past research indicates a few influences on older adults’ wellbeing, such as family relationships, perceived physical health, and connections to the community. However, no assessment existed to quantify their wellbeing when relocating into an ALF. Therefore, this dissertation details the development and factor structure of the Mueller Assessment of Transition (MAT), …

Encounters Between The Elderly And Law Enforcement

Contemporary Southern Psychology

The elderly population is growing dramatically throughout the world. Out of this growth comes an increase in the number of encounters between the aged and law enforcement. These encounters occur because of a variety of factors including mental illnesses and addictions. Furthermore, older adults may be victims as evidenced in different forms of abuse such as physical, emotional, or financial abuse. Sadly, some documentation exists that older adults are committing more crimes. Multiple reasons have been postulated for these crimes including poverty, jealousy, and boredom. All of these different situations with the aged have created an increase in the number …

Family History Of Fxtas Is Associated With Age-Related Cognitive-Linguistic Decline Among Mothers With The Fmr1 Premutation, Jessica Klusek, Amanda Fairchild, Carly Moser, Marsha R. Mailick, Angela John Thurman, Leonard Abbeduto

Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: Women who carry a premutation allele of the FMR1 gene are at increased vulnerability to an array of age-related symptoms and disorders, including age-related decline in select cognitive skills. However, the risk factors for age-related decline are poorly understood, including the potential role of family history and genetic factors. In other forms of pathological aging, early decline in syntactic complexity is observed and predicts the later onset of neurodegenerative disease. To shed light on the earliest signs of degeneration, the present study characterized longitudinal changes in the syntactic complexity of women with the FMR1 premutation across midlife, and associations …

Put On Your Dancing Shoes: Boosting Divergent Thinking In Older Adults, Megan Itagaki

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis will explore the influence of two dance modalities (dance improvisation and Zumba dance) on divergent thinking (i.e., an aspect of creativity) in older adults using a quasi-experimental design. Given the existing research on dance as a creativity intervention in the younger half of the population, this study may address a gap in the literature by extending these findings to older adults. Once prescreened to ensure cognitive competence and adequate physical mobility, participants will complete a divergent thinking task before their designated 20-minute dance intervention. After the intervention, participants will complete a divergent thinking task. It is hypothesized that …

Associations Between Self-Reported Awe And Heart Rate, Laura E. Bernstein

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Fredrickson’s (1998, 2013) broaden and build theory states that positive emotions can expand our social and cognitive awareness and provide health benefits. Some positive emotions, such as awe, may operate differently. We sought to understand how subjective reports of awe, induced through videos, correlate with HR. We know that HR tends to decrease with age (Umetani et al., 1998), individuals have less physiological reactivity as they age (Blanchard-Fields, 2007), and older adults report more positive emotions than negative emotions (Mroczek & Kolarz, 1998). Given these findings, we were interested in understanding whether there were age differences in self-reported awe and …

Mitochondrial Phenotypes In Purified Human Immune Cell Subtypes And Cell Mixtures, Shannon Rausser, Caroline Trumpff, Marlon A. Mcgill, Alex Junker, Wei Wang, Siu-Hong Ho, Anika Mitchell, Kalpita R. Karan, Catherine Monk, Suzanne C. Segerstrom, Rebecca G. Reed, Martin Picard

Psychology Faculty Publications

Using a high-throughput mitochondrial phenotyping platform to quantify multiple mitochondrial features among molecularly defined immune cell subtypes, we quantify the natural variation in mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNAcn), citrate synthase, and respiratory chain enzymatic activities in human neutrophils, monocytes, B cells, and naïve and memory T lymphocyte subtypes. In mixed peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from the same individuals, we show to what extent mitochondrial measures are confounded by both cell type distributions and contaminating platelets. Cell subtype-specific measures among women and men spanning four decades of life indicate potential age- and sex-related differences, including an age-related elevation in mtDNAcn, …

Assessing Preference And Stability Of Preference For Individuals With Neurocognitive Disorder, Megan N. Ford, Makenzie W. Bayles, Jennifer L. Bruzek

Research, Publications & Creative Work

Poor engagement can lead to a reduced quality of life for individuals with neurocognitive disorder (NCD). Research on determining preference and increasing engagement with this population is limited. The purpose of this study was to compare the accuracy of four preference assessment formats in identifying preferred activities and predicting engagement for six females with NCD and to measure the stability of preference and engagement over time. We compared the predictability of single stimulus(SS) verbal and multimedia assessments, caregiver ranking (CR) assessments, and multiple-stimulus without-replacement (MSWO) assessments. Participants responded consistently on SS assessments, but we noted inconsistencies between the CR and …

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 …