Strategy use, recall, and recall organization in young, middle-aged, and elderly adults

The application and transfer of free recall study strategies were examined for young, middle-aged, and elderly adults. Subjects were either instructed to use clustering and imagery, instructed to use their own study strategies, or given standard free recall instructions. Subjects at all age levels showed high initial use of categorization and low initial use of imagery. Subject-reported imagery increased after training, but categorization was the only strategy associated with higher recall levels. Training produced increases in recall clustering that were apparent only on a transfer list. The results provided evidence that adult age differences in memory occur even when middle-aged and elderly adults show evidence of categorization in recall.     

Perception of "appropriate" age for retirement among young adults, middle-aged adults, and elderly people

The "appropriate" age for retirement as it is perceived by young adults, middle-aged adults, and elderly people has been studied. No respondents were surprised or had trouble expressing an opinion about the minimum and maximum "appropriate" ages for retirement. Representations of the "appropriate" retirement age vary primarily as a function of the perceived physical constraints involved in the occupation, and also depend on the age of the person being questioned; the younger the respondent, and lower the perceived "appropriate" minimum age. There was no tendency among the young adults to prolong the work life of older individuals. Nor was there a tendency to associate aging with the loss of intellectual capacities likely to lead to early retirement.     

Organizational strategies in immediate recall of rapid speech by young and elderly adults

Abstract

Young and elderly adults heard recorded passages of meaningful prose with instructions to interrupt the speech at points of their choosing for immediate recall on a segment by segment basis. At normal speech rates both young and elderly subjects segmented passages primarily at coherent syntactic boundaries and showed equivalent recall performance. Increasing the passages' speech rate produced a significant reduction in recall performance for the elderly subjects relative to the young even though their segmentation strategies remained the same. Results were attributed to an age-sensitive encoding difficulty at a level higher than surface syntactic parsing.     

Organizational strategies in immediate recall of rapid speech by young and elderly adults

Young and elderly adults heard recorded passages of meaningful prose with instructions to interrupt the speech at points of their choosing for immediate recall on a segment by segment basis. At normal speech rates both young and elderly subjects segmented passages primarily at coherent syntactic boundaries and showed equivalent recall performance. Increasing the passages' speech rate produced a significant reduction in recall performance for the elderly subjects relative to the young even though their segmentation strategies remained the same. Results were attributed to an age-sensitive encoding difficulty at a level higher than surface syntactic parsing.     

Pre-experimental knowledge facilitates episodic recall in young, young-old, and old-old adults

Younger adults (mean age = 19.6), 73-year-olds and 82-year-olds were examined on free recall of verbal materials varying in datedness (i.e., names of people who attained their fame during the 1930s or the 1980s). The main result was an interaction between age and type of materials. Whereas younger adults performed better for "new" than for "old" items, both elderly groups recalled more old than new items. A highlight of these data is that activation of pre-experimental knowledge structures appears to improve episodic recall in both young-old and old-old adults.     

Characterizing adolescents, middle-aged, and elderly adults: putting the elderly into perspective

Adolescents, middle-aged, and elderly adults used a Likert scale to describe an ideal, real, or typical person of either their own age group or one of the other two. On each of four dimensions of instrumentality, autonomy, acceptability, and integrity, ideal people were characterized more positively than real or typical ones. Age of neither participant or stimulus object affected these judgments. Stereotypes emerged when typical people were rated, though judgments on real people suggested little difference between elderly and middle-aged people. However, real adolescents were judged to be more unacceptable, dependent, and instrumental than were middle-aged and elderly adults. On instrumentality the age groups differed in their perceptions of each other. Adolescents and middle-aged adults perceived instrumentality to decline in old age, but the elderly did not agree. Thus attitudes reflected stereotypes when broad categorical decisions were required, but stereotypes broke down when known people were characterized.     

Anxiety and problem solving in middle-aged and elderly adults

This study was designed to examine effects of differences in age, health, education, and sex on state and trait anxiety, and to assess interrelations between anxiety and performance on reasoning and problem solving tests. A significant main effect of health status was obtained for trait anxiety, but age, education, and sex effects were nonsignificant for both anxiety variables. Anxiety ratings were inversely correlated with performance on tests of reasoning and problem solving (traditional and practical Piagetian tasks, matrices, and similarities), but the pattern of intercorrelations was stronger within the middle-aged (40-59 years) as opposed to the elderly (60-79 years) groups. The findings fail to support the hypothesis that anxiety increases with age, or that the elderly are disproportionately affected by anxiety in testing situations.     

Sentence-final word completion norms for young, middle-aged, and older adults

This report describes sentence-final word completion norms for 119 sentence contexts based on the original sentence completion norms of Bloom and Fischler (1980). Four sets of norms are made available for 358 adults, representing young, middle-aged, young-old, and old-old samples. Notable in these norms is a high degree of consistency in responses among all four age samples. Differences in relation to the original Bloom and Fischler norms appear in responses to low contextually constraining sentences. Results show that the recency with which normative data are collected is an important variable to consider when making use of norms.     

Meaningfulness and recall of names by young and old adults

Names from one of four list conditions (elderly-relevant, young-relevant, nonmeaningful) were presented to 56 young and 56 old adults. Contrary to the findings often reported in the gerontological literature on memory, with free recall the elderly adults remembered as many names as did the young. Superior performance for the young was observed only in the young-relevant list condition. The elderly adults recalled significantly more names than did the young from the elderly- and both-relevant lists. No differences were observed for the nonmeaningful list. When asked to rate their perceived performance on the memory task, however, the older adults rated themselves lower than the young adults.     

老年人和中青年人肺部感染的对照性研究

目的探讨老年人和中青年人肺部感染的不同临床特点。方法回顾分析我院2005年3月至2007年3月收治的老年肺部感染患者166例和中青年肺部感染患者128例的临床资料。结果老年组多以咳嗽咳痰、胸闷气促为主要症状，而中青年组以发热、胸痛、咳嗽多见（P〈0.01）。老年组中白细胞计数升高者少于中青年组，合并电解质紊乱、Ⅱ型呼吸衰竭者明显多于中青年组，2组比较差异显著（P〈0.01）。痰培养发现老年组中革兰阴性杆菌感染者65例（39．2％）明显多于中青年组21例（16．4％），胸部X线检查示老年组中表现为局限性实变影者4例（2．4％），明显少于中青年组44例（34．4％），2组比较差异显著（P〈0.01）。结论老年人肺部感染临床表现多不典型，在实验室检查、胸部影像学检查方面均与中青年人有着明显不同的临床特点，临床上容易漏诊、误诊，应给予高度重视。     

Strategy use mediates the relationship between control beliefs and memory performance for middle-aged and older adults

We examined whether the relationship between control beliefs and memory performance varied for young, middle-aged, and older adults and whether strategy use mediated this relationship. Participants were 335 adults, ages 21 to 83, who had been recruited from local probability samples. We used structural equation modeling to test the predicted model and compare it by age group (young, middle-aged, and older adults). As expected, control beliefs were related to memory performance on a word list recall task for middle-aged and older adults, but not for younger adults. An analysis of indirect effects revealed that strategy use partially mediated this relationship. Specifically, middle-aged and older adults who perceived greater control over cognitive functioning were more likely to categorize the words and had better recall performance.     

Spatial perspective-taking ability in young and elderly adults

Three experiments investigated spatial perspective-taking ability in young and elderly women. The three experiments differed with regard to the method by which subjects were initially familiarzied with the experimental stimuli. Subjects were required to make decisions about the correctness of each of several types of slides presented to them. The amount of time required by subjects to make their responses was also obtained. The results show a smaller age difference in accuracy of performance when individual components of the stimulus array were examined in isolation (Experiment 2) than when the array was actually previewed from the perspective-taking positions (Experiment 1). Furthermore, a combination of the two methods of familiarization (Experiment 3) did not reduce the age difference in accuracy of performance beyond that obtained by the examination of individual components alone. Age differences in reaction time for correct responses, however, steadily decreased between Experiments 1, 2, and 3. These results raise the possibility that cognitive systems associated with storing and retrieving spatial information may decline more rapidly across the adult life span than cognitive systems involved in the construction of unviewed spatial information.     

Test anxiety in elderly and young adults.

Test anxiety in elderly and young adult college students was measured by the Anxiety Achievement Test following a free-recall memory experiment. As expected, the elderly had higher levels of debilitating test anxiety than the younger adults. A large proportion of older persons showed behavioural manifestations of test anxiety either by refusing to participate in the study, or by their reactions during the testing. Test anxiety was related to memory performance among both age groups, suggesting than an older person's performance on a cognitive task may be influenced by affective reactions to the testing situation itself.     

扬州地区老年人、中年人及青年人听力情况调查分析

目的 调查分析目前扬州地区老年人群（≥60岁）、中年人群（≥45岁且＜60岁）和青年人群（≥30岁且＜45岁）听力状况,着重了解老年性聋的分布和严重程度的相关情况,为老年性聋的预防、治疗提供科学可靠的依据。方法 用随机抽样的方法调查扬州市区、江都、仪征、宝应、高邮、安徽天长的听力情况。总共选取2 116人,运用纯音测听、声导抗、听力筛选等方法进行统计分析。结果 首先进行耳部检查,去除耵聍及异物等,确诊传导性听力损失人群（外耳或中耳疾病患者）,给予治疗指导意见,并在研究中予以排除,老年组人群听力减退比例为65.57%,其中轻度听力损失为46.78%,中度听力损失为13.31%,中重度听力损失为4.25%,重度听力损失为1.23%。中年组人群听力减退比例为48.12%,其中轻度、中度、中重度和重度听力损失分别为41.76%、4.34%、1.45%和0.58%。青年组人群听力减退比例为47.05%,其中各度听力损失分别为37.12%、6.76%、2.73%和0.43%,老年人、中年人及青年人听力损失的差异有统计学意义。结论 随着年龄增长,听力损失情况逐步加重。听阈随着年龄的增长而提高,并且在高频处,听力损失尤为明显。重视老年性疾病（如高血压、糖尿病、冠心病、脑供血不足等）的预防与治疗,避免噪声环境,拒绝烟酒等,对于防治老年患者的听力损失,有积极作用。     

Human metapneumovirus infections in young and elderly adults

Human metapneumovirus virus (hMPV) is a newly discovered respiratory pathogen with limited epidemiological data available. Cohorts of young and older adults were prospectively evaluated for hMPV infection during 2 winter seasons. Patients hospitalized for cardiopulmonary conditions during that period were also studied. Overall, 44 (4.5%) of 984 illnesses were associated with hMPV infection, and 9 (4.1%) of 217 asymptomatic subjects were infected. There was a significant difference in rates of hMPV illnesses between years 1 and 2 (7/452 [1.5%] vs. 37/532 [7.0%]; P<.0001). In the second year, 11% of hospitalized patients had evidence of hMPV infection. Infections occurred in all age groups but were most common among young adults. Frail elderly people with hMPV infection frequently sought medical attention. In conclusion, hMPV infection occurs in adults of all ages and may account for a significant portion of persons hospitalized with respiratory infections during some years.     

Imagery ratings for young and elderly adults

Ratings of imagery value for 100 words were obtained from young and elderly adults. The ratings of elderly adults correlated highly with the ratings of young adults for both the present group and the normative group employed by Paivio, Yuille, and Madigan [4], indicating the generalizability of young adult norms to the population of elderly adults. In addition, the ratings of elderly adults were unrelated to variation in age, educational level, or vocabulary score.     

Verbatim and inferential memory in young and elderly adults

Young and elderly adults were tested for inferential and verbatim recall from a list of unrelated sentences. All participants performed an encoding task (pleasantness rating or comprehension task) during input and, at test, attempted to answer a series of who questions. Half of the questions required verbatim recall; the other half could only be answered on the basis of an inference from an input sentence. For both types of question, young adults recalled more than elderly adults. Age differences were larger after pleasantness rating than after the comprehension task for both kinds of recall, suggesting that any benefits of comprehension encoding are not the result of specific attention to inferences but, more generally, result from the meaning integration or unique representation created for each sentence. Analyses of conditionalized recall (i.e., recall given a particular level of similarity between comprehension encoding and experimenter's subsequent inferential cues) showed that old adults were less likely than young adults to use inferential recall cues highly similar to their own comprehension responses.     

青中年时期体重状态变化与中老年时期高血压的关系

目的:探讨青年及中年时期超重后的体重状态变化及减重比与中老年高血压患病风险的关系。方法:选取中国糖尿病和代谢紊乱研究中年龄40～79岁的人群。减重比定义为(最大体重-目前体重)/最大体重。采用多因素 logistic回归分析,分别探讨青年及中年超重后的体重状态变化及减重比与高血压的关系。 结果:共...     

Health practices and illness cognition in young, middle aged, and elderly adults

The present paper examines reported frequencies of 21 health practices, beliefs that these health practices can prevent six different illnesses, and beliefs about those illnesses in a community sample of 396 people: 173 young (20 to 39 years), 111 middle-aged (40 to 59 years), and 112 elderly adults (60 to 89 years). Elderly respondents report higher frequencies of health-promoting actions (e.g., regular medical check-ups, avoidance of salt, regular sleep, and eating a balanced diet) than younger respondents. Health practices aimed at reinterpreting stress and controlling emotions (e.g., avoiding emotional stress, staying mentally alert and active) also increased with age. Belief that these 21 practices prevent specific illnesses was consistent across the three age groups. Beliefs about the six illnesses were consistent across age with three exceptions: Elderly people considered themselves more vulnerable to disease, saw it as more serious for them, and were less likely to use chronic mild symptoms, like weakness and aches, as illness warnings.