Explain Age Differences Research Articles

Children's Elaborated Responses to Yes-No Questions in Forensic Interviews About Sexual Abuse.

Children tend to answer yes-no questions with unelaborated "yes" and "no" responses, but the types of details likely omitted from unelaborated answers have not been explored. This study examined 379 4- to 12-year-olds' answers to yes-no questions in forensic interviews about CSA (N = 11,187), focusing on age differences in elaborated responses. As expected, older children elaborated more frequently than younger children. Our novel categorization of elaboration types revealed that although there were no age differences in children's use of nominal corrections (correcting a label), or in emphatic negations (giving forceful denials), older children were more likely to give narrative elaborations (providing additional narrative information), wh-elaborations (answering implicit wh-questions), and qualified elaborations (avoiding potentially misleading implications of unelaborated "yes" and "no" responses). The results suggest that children's developing understanding of the implied meaning of questions and responses helps to explain age differences in elaborative responses to yes-no questions.

Age differences in mental health from May through August 2020 among U.S. adults: trajectories and the role of pandemic, lifestyle, and social factors

Objectives: Using nationally representative data among U.S. adults, we assess age differences in changes in mental health both from 2018 to May 2020 and during the pandemic. We also examine factors explaining age differences in mental health. Methods: We analyzed 2018 General Social Survey data (N = 2,348; age 18–89) and three waves of COVID Response Tracking Study data (N = 2,279; age 20–94) spanning May–August 2020. Outcomes included happiness, loneliness, stress, positive affect, and negative affect. Results: U.S. adults reported greater loneliness and less happiness in May 2020 versus 2018. Only loneliness and negative affect changed significantly from May to August 2020, showing declines. Mental health trajectories did not differ significantly by age. Overall, older adults reported lower loneliness, stress, and negative affect than younger adults during 2020. Older age was associated with two factors linked with better mental health: less likelihood of COVID-19 exposure and greater satisfaction with social activities and relationships. However, none of the factors examined herein explained age differences in mental health. Conclusion: Although mental health trajectories during the pandemic were similar across ages, older adults tended to report better mental health than younger adults. Future research should identify factors that explain age differences in mental health that persisted into 2020.

Explaining age differences in the memory-experience gap.

Emotions and symptoms are often overestimated in retrospective ratings, a phenomenon referred to as the "memory-experience gap." Some research has shown that this gap is less pronounced among older compared to younger adults for self-reported negative affect, but it is not known whether these age differences are evident consistently across domains of well-being and why these age differences emerge. In this study, we examined age differences in the memory-experience gap for emotional (positive and negative affect), social (loneliness), and physical (pain, fatigue) well-being. We also tested four variables that could plausibly explain age differences in the gap: (a) episodic memory and executive functioning, (b) the age-related positivity effect, (c) variability of daily experiences, and (d) socially desirable responding. Adults (n = 477) from three age groups (21-44, 45-64, 65+ years old) participated in a 21-day diary study. Participants completed daily end-of-day ratings and retrospective ratings of the same constructs over different recall periods (3, 7, 14, and 21 days). Results showed that, relative to young and middle-aged adults, older adults had a smaller memory-experience gap for negative affect and loneliness. Lower day-to-day variability partly explained why the gap was smaller for older adults. There was no evidence that the magnitude of the memory-experience gap for positive affect, pain or fatigue depended on age. We recommend that future research considers how variability in daily experiences can impact age differences in retrospective self-reports of well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotion regulation across the lifespan: age differences in intrapersonal and interpersonal strategies for the adjustment to the COVID-19 pandemic in four countries

Objectives Studies have shown age differences in adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic. The processes explaining these age differences remain unclear. Intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation play an important role in psycho-social adjustment and develop across the lifespan. This study investigated whether differences in COVID-19-related adjustment disorder symptoms can be explained by age-differences in rumination in a multi-national sample. Furthermore, linguistic indicators of ruminative processing were examined with reference to age. Methods N = 1401 participants (from USA, UK, Switzerland, Germany, aged 18–88) completed an online survey and a writing task. Measures included brooding, co-brooding, adjustment disorder symptoms, and language indicators of negative self- and communal-focus . Results Older participants reported less adjustment disorder symptoms which was mediated by less (co-)brooding. Participants reporting more (co-)brooding wrote about COVID-19 more negatively. While in younger adults more self-focus was associated with higher ruminative brooding, in older adults it was associated with less brooding. Conclusion These findings contribute to a better understanding of regulatory mechanisms that help explain age differences in mental health. They warrant further research considering age-related differences, as our results suggest not only more adaptive emotion regulation as resilience factor in older individuals but also different qualities of self-focus while processing stressful events.

Factors influencing developmental differences in retention of Pavlovian fear conditioning.

Modern nonhuman animal research on the rapid forgetting of memories formed early in life-often termed "infantile amnesia"-has focused on neurobiological changes occurring between learning and retention testing to explain age differences in memory. Developmental differences in initial learning have received less attention as a contributing factor to infantile amnesia effects. The present study identifies conditions under which associative learning and memory are comparable between pre and postweaning rats across multiple training-testing intervals. Postnatal day (P) 17-18 or P24-25 littermates were trained with white noise conditional stimuli (CSs) alone, forward-paired, or explicitly unpaired with floor shock unconditional stimuli (USs), and tested for retention at intervals ranging between 5 min and 15 days later. Findings from within- and across-institution replications revealed that age differences in CS freezing were influenced by (a) the associative nature of the CS and US at training, (b) the number of CS, US presentations at training, and (c) the interval between training and testing. Rats trained on P17 or 18 displayed robust retention comparable to rats trained on P24 or 25 only when training in younger rats involved additional forward-paired CS-US presentations. Poor long-term retention observed at multiple training-testing intervals in rats trained on P17 or 18 was overcome with many additional forward-paired CS-US presentations at training. Conditions necessary for appropriate developmental comparisons of learning and memory relevant to the future neurobiological studies are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Explaining Age Differences in the Motivating Potential of Intergenerational Contact at Work

AbstractUnderstanding the effects of intergenerational contact at work is important given aging and increasingly age-diverse workforces. The aim of this research was to better understand who derives motivational benefits from intergenerational contact, and the processes by which this occurs. To do so, we adopted a motivational lens grounded in need-based theories of work motivation and lifespan development theory. We argue that the motivating effect of intergenerational contact on work engagement via sense of belonging is more pronounced for older compared with younger employees due to changes in goal priorities across the lifespan. Specifically, we posit the generativity motive and perceived remaining time at work as lifespan-related mechanisms that explain the moderating effects of age on the links between intergenerational contact and work engagement. In Study 1, a laboratory experiment with 45 younger and 45 older participants in Switzerland, we found support for a causal effect of intergenerational contact on sense of belonging. In Study 2, a three-wave field study with 560 employees in Germany, we found that sense of belonging mediated the relation between intergenerational contact and work engagement. Furthermore, perceived remaining time at work explained the moderating effect of age on the link between sense of belonging and work engagement. By highlighting age differences in the motivating potential of intergenerational contact, we advance research on intergroup contact, employee motivation, and workforce aging.

Now You See Them, Now You Don’t: Age Differences in Risk Aversion

Older age has often, but not always, been associated with greater risk aversion. Some have suggested that age differences in risk may reflect age-related declines in cognitive abilities. This study investigated the robustness of age differences in risk aversion across three different risk-taking measures, after controlling for cognitive abilities. Community-dwelling younger (n = 75; 25-36 years, M age = 29.01) and older (n = 74; 60-90 years, M age = 69.11) adults completed self-report and behavioral measures of risk aversion and several measures of cognitive abilities. Results showed that older adults reported significantly greater risk aversion than young adults on the behavioral measure of risk (Balloon Analogue Risk Task, BART), but not on the self-report measures (Framing Task and Choice Dilemmas Questionnaire). Greater risk aversion on BART was significantly associated with lower analytic thinking, slower processing speed, and worse shifting of attention. Therefore, we tested the relation between age and risk aversion on the BART while controlling for these three cognitive abilities. Age differences in risk aversion remained significant even after accounting for cognitive abilities. Our results suggest that the lack of consistent age differences in risk aversion in the literature may at least partly be due to measurement differences, which raises concerns about the construct validity of these measures of risk aversion. Moreover, cognitive decline may not explain age differences in risk. Further research is needed to understand factors that dampen and heighten risk aversion in people of diverse ages.

The effects of age on resting-state BOLD signal variability is explained by cardiovascular and cerebrovascular factors.

Accurate identification of brain function is necessary to understand neurocognitive aging, and thereby promote health and well‐being. Many studies of neurocognitive aging have investigated brain function with the blood‐oxygen level‐dependent (BOLD) signal measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging. However, the BOLD signal is a composite of neural and vascular signals, which are differentially affected by aging. It is, therefore, essential to distinguish the age effects on vascular versus neural function. The BOLD signal variability at rest (known as resting state fluctuation amplitude, RSFA), is a safe, scalable, and robust means to calibrate vascular responsivity, as an alternative to breath‐holding and hypercapnia. However, the use of RSFA for normalization of BOLD imaging assumes that age differences in RSFA reflecting only vascular factors, rather than age‐related differences in neural function (activity) or neuronal loss (atrophy). Previous studies indicate that two vascular factors, cardiovascular health (CVH) and cerebrovascular function, are insufficient when used alone to fully explain age‐related differences in RSFA. It remains possible that their joint consideration is required to fully capture age differences in RSFA. We tested the hypothesis that RSFA no longer varies with age after adjusting for a combination of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular measures. We also tested the hypothesis that RSFA variation with age is not associated with atrophy. We used data from the population‐based, lifespan Cam‐CAN cohort. After controlling for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular estimates alone, the residual variance in RSFA across individuals was significantly associated with age. However, when controlling for both cardiovascular and cerebrovascular estimates, the variance in RSFA was no longer associated with age. Grey matter volumes did not explain age differences in RSFA, after controlling for CVH. The results were consistent between voxel‐level analysis and independent component analysis. Our findings indicate that cardiovascular and cerebrovascular signals are together sufficient predictors of age differences in RSFA. We suggest that RSFA can be used to separate vascular from neuronal factors, to characterize neurocognitive aging. We discuss the implications and make recommendations for the use of RSFA in the research of aging.

Loneliness from young adulthood to old age: Explaining age differences in loneliness

Prior research in non-U.S. samples has found a complex nonlinear relationship between loneliness and age. This research has shown that established predictors of loneliness—poor health, being unmarried, living alone, and having infrequent social interactions—help to explain age differences in loneliness. However, while some variables were found to be universal predictors of loneliness at all ages, others were relevant in specific age groups only. In this study, we describe age differences in frequency of loneliness from age 18 to 89+ years in the U.S. and examine age differences in predictors of loneliness from age-specificity and age-normative perspectives. We used cross-sectional nationally representative data from the General Social Survey (N = 2,477) and found a nonlinear relationship between age and loneliness that closely resembles prior research. However, we found no evidence for age-specific predictors of loneliness. Household income, household size, marital status, health, and frequency of socializing were “universal” predictors of loneliness; their associations with loneliness did not differ in strength with age. Our hypothesis that individuals who deviated from age-specific norms would experience more intense loneliness was not supported. Implications for research and loneliness interventions are discussed.

Emotion understanding and the moral self-concept as motivators of prosocial behavior in middle childhood

The moral self-concept reflects the view of oneself in terms of moral behavior and has been proposed to predict actual behavior. Theories also suggest emotions and emotion knowledge to predict prosocial behavior, but the interplay between the moral self-concept and emotions is largely unknown. This interplay is especially important to study in middle childhood, a relevant period for the ontogeny of the moral self-concept and when emotions regarding prosocial behavior are suggested to change. The current study explored the nature of the relation between the moral self-concept, prosocial behavior, and consequential emotions (Experiment 1) or anticipated emotions (Experiment 2) regarding prosocial behavior in 5- to 9-year-olds (together N = 169). Moreover, we investigated whether emotions mediate the relation between the moral self-concept and prosocial behavior. Overall, the moral self-concept was positively related to prosocial behavior. In addition, emotional consequences as well as anticipated emotions explained age differences in sharing behavior. Moreover, the results hint to an indirect effect of the moral self-concept on sharing behavior through the anticipation of negative feelings when not-sharing. Interestingly, children who first reflected about the affective consequences of prosocial behavior seemed to share more. In line with theories, the results demonstrate that both the moral self-concept and emotions are relevant motivators of prosocial behavior in middle childhood.

Beyond prospective memory retrieval: Encoding and remembering of intentions across the lifespan

Combining behavioral and electrophysiological measures, we investigated the role of memory processes for prospective memory development in three different age groups over the lifespan. We focused on age differences during intention encoding, retention and retrieval in order to assess if potential age-associated performance differences in adolescence and older age can be explained by associated neurophysiological differences. Our research aim was to understand the impact of memory-related factors such as intention load and encoding time on prospective remembering, focusing especially on encoding and retention, which are two so far scarcely investigated phases. Adolescents, younger and older adults worked on a semantic judgment task with an embedded prospective memory task. Participants had to encode either one or two intentions; the encoding time was either four or eight seconds long. Younger and older adults outperformed adolescents behaviorally. Furthermore, performance was better for remembering one intention compared to remembering two intentions. On the neural level, we found age-specific modulations for the fronto-polar slow wave (FPSW) and the temporal-parietal slow wave (TPSW) that were sensitive to the number of intentions. Adolescents showed differences between encoding one or two intentions in the FPSW, while older adults showed these differences for the TPSW. Maintaining an intention increased fronto-central sustained activity compared to no intention. Furthermore, the activity during intention maintenance was sensitive to the number of intentions. Prospective positivity amplitudes during retrieval were smallest in adolescents and largest in older adults, but were not influenced by the memory manipulations. Parietal slow wave activity increased with increasing number of intentions, reflecting post-retrieval coordination between the ongoing and prospective memory task. In sum, only activity of the FPSW and the TPSW showed that age-related differences were influenced by memory-related factors during encoding, whereas these interactions were not observed for retention or retrieval. Our findings suggest that intention encoding and its efficiency play an important role in explaining age differences in prospective memory.

Motivated to be socially mindful: Explaining age differences in the effect of employees’ contact quality with coworkers on their coworker support

AbstractIn this research, we examine how high‐quality contact can facilitate employees’ coworker support and explain why the benefits of high‐quality contact are contingent upon age. First, we employ a social mindfulness lens to decipher the motivational mechanisms of high‐quality contact with coworkers on providing coworker support via coworker‐oriented perspective taking and empathic concern. Second, we utilize socioemotional selectivity theory to overcome the current age‐blind view on workplace interactions and examine the indirect moderating effect of age via future time perspective on the link between contact quality, social mindfulness, and coworker support. We tested our hypotheses based on data from a sample of 575 employees collected in three waves. Results showed that both coworker‐oriented perspective taking and empathic concern mediated the positive effects of contact quality on coworker support. The effect of contact quality on coworker‐oriented empathic concern was stronger for older employees with a more constrained future time perspective as compared to younger employees with a more extensive future time perspective. Overall, we extend research on aging, workplace interactions, and support behavior by linking the literature on these topics using a social mindfulness lens and by adding employee age and age‐related mechanisms as important boundary conditions that qualify the outcomes of positive workplace contact.

Hybrid foraging search in younger and older age.

In hybrid foraging tasks, observers search visual displays, so called patches, for multiple instances of any of several types of targets with the goal of collecting targets as quickly as possible. Here, targets were photorealistic objects. Younger and older adults collected targets by mouse clicks. They could move to the next patch whenever they decided to do so. The number of targets held in memory varied between 8 and 64 objects, and the number of items (targets and distractors) in the patches varied between 60 and 105 objects. Older adults foraged somewhat less efficiently than younger adults due to a more exploitative search strategy. When target items became depleted in a patch and search slowed down, younger adults acted according to the optimal foraging theory and moved on to the next patch when the instantaneous rate of collection was close to their average rate of collection. Older adults, by contrast, were more likely to stay longer and spend time searching for the last few targets. Within a patch, both younger and older adults tended to collect the same type of target in "runs." This behavior is more efficient than continual switching between target types. Furthermore, after correction for general age-related slowing, RT × set size functions revealed largely preserved attention and memory functions in older age. Hybrid foraging tasks share features with important real-world search tasks. Differences between younger and older observers on this task may therefore help to explain age differences in many complex search tasks of daily life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

C-18 A Distributional and Theoretical Analysis of Reaction Time in the Reversal Task Across Adulthood

Abstract Objective Reversal learning (RL) tasks, known to be frontal-lobe dependent, are frequently used in experimental paradigms to assess components of executive function. Extant literature has historically focused on measures of accuracy as their primary outcome, but reaction time (RT) has not yet been well examined. The present study thoroughly examines RT in order to better characterize RL performance and how it changes with age. Method 182 healthy aging participants completed a RL task, including 43 young (ages 18-30) and 139 community dwelling middle-aged adults (ages 40-61). In order to identify the best predictors of age among RL performance, an adaptive elastic net generalized regression with Poisson distribution modeling and Akakie information criteria (AIC) penalty was utilized. Variables were included from the Diffusion model (a, v, t0), ex-Gaussian distribution (mu, sigma, tau), Normal-3 Mixture distribution (location1-3, dispersion1-3, probability1-3), and RL trials-to-criterion. Results A Generalized R2=.83 demonstrated good prediction of age with 7 of 17 variables being significant predictors, including, in order of significance: Mu, Sigma, Dispersion1, Location1, Dispersion2, t0, and Tau. Only two of those predictors had Independent Resampled Variable Importance values greater than .1 (Mu=.645, Dispersion1=.221), indicating older age is associated with slower and more variable efficient responding. Conclusions RT adds unique variance to explaining age differences in reversal learning performance which suggests it’s important to measure RT as a fractionated construct. Older adults showed slower efficient mean RT and increased intra-individual variability, which has been linked to poorer frontal lobe processes and age-related cognitive decline.

Technological Progress and Youth Employment in South Korea

ABSTRACTThis paper analyzes the extent to which technology progress and youth employment are related. In doing so, we divide workers into two groups – young workers and old (prime-aged) workers - and then estimate the elasticity of substitution between (physical) capital and workers à la Jaimovich et al. (2013. “The Demand for Youth: Explaining Age Differences in the Volatility of Hours.” American Economic Review 103 (7): 3022–3044) by using the Korean labour market data between 2000 and 2014. Our findings indicate that the elasticity of substitution is greater (or at least not smaller) for young workers than for old workers.

Explaining age differences in working memory: The role of updating, inhibition, and shifting.

We declare no conflict of interest. We thank Melanie Zeintl for assistance with setting up the study and data collection. Matthias Kliegel received support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Christoph Stahl and Christoph Kaller received support from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, grants #01GW0730 and #01GW0710).

Heightened Adolescent Risk-Taking? Insights From Lab Studies on Age Differences in Decision-Making

Surveys concur that adolescents disproportionately engage in many real-world risk behaviors, compared with children and adults. Recently researchers have employed laboratory risky decision-making tasks to replicate this apparent heightened adolescent risk-taking. This review builds on the main findings of the first meta-analysis of such age differences in risky decision-making in the laboratory. Overall, although adolescents engage in more risky decision-making than adults, adolescents engage in risky decision-making equal to children. However, adolescents take fewer risks than children on tasks that allow the option of opting out of taking a risk. To reconcile findings on age differences in risk-taking in the real-world versus the laboratory, an integrative framework merges theories on neuropsychological development with ecological models that emphasize the importance of risk exposure in explaining age differences in risk-taking. Policy insights and recent developments are discussed.

Effects of Psychiatric Disorders on Suicide Attempt: Similarities and Differences Between Older and Younger Adults in a National Cohort Study.

Several common psychiatric disorders are associated with increased risk of suicide attempts, and the strength of these associations may vary between younger and older adults, which may explain age differences in suicide risk. Because psychiatric disorders often co-occur, it remains unclear whether (1) the risk of suicide attempt in older and younger adults is due to specific psychiatric disorders or underlying psychopathology dimensions (ie, internalizing and externalizing dimensions) and (2) the extent to which individual psychiatric disorders make distinct contributions to suicide attempt risk varies by age. In a large nationally representative longitudinal survey, the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC; Wave 1, 2001-2002; Wave 2, 2004-2005), multiple-group structural equation modeling was used to examine shared and specific effects of DSM-IV-TR Axis I and Axis II disorders on the 3-year occurrence of suicide attempts in 4 different age groups (18-30 years, 31-40 years, 41-49 years, and ≥ 50 years). The study population included 34,653 individuals. In each age group, effect of psychiatric disorders on risk of attempting suicide was almost exclusively mediated through a general psychopathology factor representing the shared effect across all disorders (P < .01). The magnitude of this effect was significantly lower in older than in younger adults (P < .05). No individual disorder had significant additional effects on attempt risk. These findings underscore the importance of assessing suicide attempt risk in patients at all ages who present with common psychiatric disorders and the need for prevention strategies focused on the general psychopathology dimension.

Understanding Emotion in Adolescents: A Review of Emotional Frequency, Intensity, Instability, and Clarity

Adolescence is a time of transition from childhood to adulthood during which significant changes occur across multiple domains, including emotional experience. This article reviews the relevant literature on adolescents’ experience of four specific dimensions of emotion: emotional frequency, intensity, instability, and clarity. In an effort to examine how emotional experiences change as individuals approach adulthood, we examine these dimensions across ages 10 to 19, and review how the emotional functioning of adolescents compares to that of adults. In addition, we explore whether and how gender and puberty explain age differences in emotional experience. Finally, we discuss how these findings could inform future research on both the typical trajectory of emotional experience and the development of psychopathology in adolescence.

Conservative parenting: Investigating the relationships between parenthood, moral judgment, and social conservatism

Strategic perspectives on moral and political attitudes suggest that people often tailor such attitudes to serve the current or future needs of themselves and their families. Given the critical importance of parenting in human life, we were interested in whether parenthood was associated with individual differences in political and moral attitudes, and whether parenthood and parenting motivation might partly explain age differences in these attitudes. Given that a key element of social conservatism is vigilance towards uncertainty and threat and, given that parenting is often associated with risk aversion, we predicted that parents (and those high in parenting motivation) would be more morally vigilant and more socially conservative. Across four studies including over 1500 participants, both objective parenthood and subjective parenting motivation independently predicted both outcomes. Further analyses revealed that both parenthood and parenting motivation mediated the relationships between age and both social conservatism and moral vigilance.