Four experiments are reported in which subjects gained extensive experience with artificial grammars in explicit and implicit processing tasks. Results indicated that (a) implicit processing was sufficient for learning a finite state grammar but was inadequate for learning another type of grammar based on logical rules, (b) Subjects were able to communicate some of their implicit knowledge of the grammars to another person, (c) Consistent with rule induction but not memory array models of learning, verbal protocols indicated there was no tendency to converge on the same set of cues used to identify valid strings, (d) A synergistic learning effect occurred when both implicit and explicit processing tasks were used in the grammar based on logical rules but not in the finite state grammar. A theoretical framework is proposed in which implicit learning is conceptualized as an automatic, memory-based mechanism for detecting patterns of family resemblance among exemplars.

Qualitative differences in problem-solving style for situations varying in emotional salience were examined among adolescents, young, middle-aged, and older adults. Participants wrote essays on how each of 15 problem situations should be resolved. There were minimal age differences for problem-focused strategies, with all age groups using this strategy the most. Age differences for problem-solving strategy were highly dependent on the degree to which the situation was emotionally salient. All individuals were more likely to use an avoidant-denial strategy in low emotionally salient situations and passive-dependent and cognitive-analysis strategies in high emotionally salient situations. However, older adults used both passive-dependent and avoidant-denial strategies more than younger age groups. Problem-focused strategies were used least in high emotionally salient situations. Implications of findings are discussed from an adult developmental perspective.

We examined age differences in problem-focused and emotion-regulatory problem-solving strategy use for self-generated family problems. Young, middle-aged, and older participants generated family problem situations that were high and low in emotional salience. They were asked both how they solved the problem and how they managed emotions involved in the problem. We conducted analyses on three categories of problem-solving strategies: instrumental strategies, proactive emotion regulation, and passive emotion regulation. When regulating emotions, middle-aged adults used more proactive emotion-regulation strategies than older adults, and older adults used more passive emotion-regulation strategies than middle-aged adults. These effects were driven by the high emotional salience condition.

Using the Everyday Problem Solving Inventory of Cornelius and Caspi, we examined differences in problem-solving strategy endorsement and effectiveness in two domains of everyday functioning (instrumental or interpersonal, and a mixture of the two domains) and for four strategies (avoidance-denial, passive dependence, planful problem solving, and cognitive analysis). Consistent with past research, our research showed that older adults were more problem focused than young adults in their approach to solving instrumental problems, whereas older adults selected more avoidant-denial strategies than young adults when solving interpersonal problems. Overall, older adults were also more effective than young adults when solving everyday problems, in particular for interpersonal problems.

We examined whether instructions to regulate emotions after a disgust-inducing film clip create an equally costly cognitive load across adulthood. Young and older adults across all instructional conditions initially demonstrated increased working memory performance after mood induction, typical of practice effects. Age-group differences emerged at the second post-induction trial. When instructed to down-regulate disgust feelings, older adults' performance continually increased, whereas young adults' performance dropped. Instructions to maintain disgust did not affect working memory performance. Consistent with claims that older adults are more effective at regulating emotions, findings indicate that intentional down-regulation of negative emotions may be less costly in older age.Evidence is accumulating that emotion regulation is a resource-demanding process that disrupts simultaneously or subsequently performed tasks (Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007;Richards, 2004). For example, when trying to conceal negative emotions, people's memory performance suffers (Richards & Gross, 2000). When suppressing forbidden thoughts, people subsequently give up more quickly at solving anagrams (Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, 1998). When presented with craving-eliciting cues, smokers have prolonged reaction times and their math and language comprehension decreases (C. J. Madden & Zwaan, 2001;Zwaan & Truitt, 1998). So far, studies have examined the link between emotion regulation and cognition primarily in young adults. Thus, the question arises as to whether this detrimental effect of emotion regulation is present in both young and older adults. In other words, does the allocation of resources needed to effectively regulate emotions vary by age?The aging literature suggests that older adults are more motivated to regulate their emotions and are more effective at doing so than young adults BlanchardFields, Mienaltowski, & Seay, 2007;Carstensen, Pasupathi, Mayr, & Nesselroade, 2000). According to socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999), older adults' awareness that lifetime is shrinking motivates them to focus on the present, emphasizing goals related to emotional satisfaction and meaning. Hence, emotion regulation goals are assumed to be chronically activated in older adults, whereas they should be activated Please address correspondence concerning this article to Susanne Scheibe, Department of Psychology, Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305. E-mail: scheibe@stanford.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: The following manuscript is the final accepted manuscript. It has not been subjected to the final copyediting, fact-checking, and proofreading required for formal publication. It is not the definitive, publisher-authenticated version. The American Psychological Association and its Council of Editors disclaim any responsibility or liabilities for errors or omissions of this manuscript version, any version derived from this manuscript by NIH, or other third parties. The published...

Despite cognitive declines that occur with aging, older adults solve emotionally salient and interpersonal problems in more effective ways than young adults do. I review evidence suggesting that older adults (a) tailor their strategies to the contextual features of the problem and (b) effectively use a combination of instrumental and emotion-regulation strategies. I identify factors of problem-solving contexts that affect what types of problem-solving strategies will be effective. Finally, I discuss how this identification of factors affects what we know about developmental differences in everyday problemsolving competence.

Current theory and research on emotion and aging suggests that (1) older adults report more positive affective experience (more happiness) than younger adults; (2) older adults attend to and remember emotionally-valenced stimuli differently than younger adults (i.e., they show age-related positivity effects in attention and memory); and (3) the reason that older adults have more positive affective experience is because the positivity effects they display serve as emotion regulatory strategies. It is suggested that age differences in cognitive processes therefore lead to the outcome of positive affective experience. In this paper, we critically review the literature on age differences in positive affective experience and on age-related positivity effects in attention and memory. Furthermore, we question the extent to which existing evidence supports a link between age-related positivity effects and positive affective outcomes. We then provide a framework for formally testing process-outcome links that might explain affective outcomes across adulthood. It may be that older adults (and others) do sometimes use their cognition as a regulatory tool to help them feel good, but that can only be demonstrated by specifically linking cognitive processes, such as age-related positivity effects, with affective outcomes. These concepts have implications for cognition-emotion links at any age.

This study introduces an attributional processing approach to study age differences in dispositional attributions. Dispositional attributions made in the context of relationship vignettes were examined among younger and older adults in 2 conditions (immediate and delayed rating conditions). By using a direct assessment of a 2-step process for making dispositional attributions, it was inferred that a spontaneous adjustment stage occurred following an initial characterization stage as a function of age group and content of vignettes. Older adults made lower dispositional ratings if they were given more time to think about the situations than if asked to make an immediate judgment. By contrast, younger adults made higher dispositional ratings if they were given more time to make the judgments. Qualitative analyses of schemas elicited by a subsample of participants for each vignette suggested a relationship between dispositional attributional ratings and content-evoked schemas.