The 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has broadly impacted our daily lives. Here, we used a longitudinal approach to investigate older adults’ mood and expectations regarding aging before and during the global pandemic (Study 1). We also examined age differences in mood, expectations regarding aging, COVID-19 attitudes, and loneliness using a cross-sectional approach (Study 2). In Study 1, older adults completed a mood and expectations regarding aging survey up to 2 years prior to the pandemic and again in April, 2020 (during the pandemic). Participants also completed surveys regarding COVID-19 attitudes and loneliness. In Study 2, a United States sample of younger and older adults completed these surveys during the pandemic. Older adults’ mood and expectations regarding aging remained fairly constant, and younger adults showed lower mood and expectations regarding aging than did older adults, despite older adults showing greater concern about COVID-19. Overall, we find that some older adults seem to be resilient with respect to their mood and expectations regarding aging. These findings reveal important preliminary implications for how older adults may be impacted as a result of lifestyle changes necessary for well-being and the well-being of society.

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Aging is associated with declines in cognitive functioning and memory; however, research has shown that older adults can and do compensate for these declines in a variety of ways. This chapter discusses various theories of motivational shifts in older adulthood, older adults’ ability to selectively remember important information, and the importance of prior knowledge in the ability to compensate for declines in memory and cognition as a result of aging. Older adults can also use their metacognitive awareness to engage in strategies to improve memory for goal-specific information by selectively allocating attentional resources to what is most important. Intrinsic motivational influences on memory and cognition, such as emotion and curiosity, are also discussed. The chapter presents an overview of how metacognition, curiosity, emotion, goals, and strategic encoding can bias and enhance memory selectivity such that older adults are often tuned to remember what is most important.

Many sources of contamination for lipid preparations exist in the laboratory. These contaminants can be detected using thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and infrared spectroscopy. Numerous components that are potential contaminants and can lead to false analyses were demonstrated by TLC in laboratory soaps, cleaners, hand creams and lotions, hair tonics, laboratory greases, floor waxes, oil vapors, tobacco smoke, hydrocarbon phases for gas-liquid chromatography, etc. Procedures preventing introduction of contaminants are presented including descriptions of equipment and precautions to eliminate or minimize contamination. These are useful in isolation of pure polar and nonpolar lipids.

Our memory for common, easily recognizable logos, like the Apple logo, is surprisingly poor because of attentional saturation, where we stop attending to details of frequently encountered objects. This lack of attention to details may leave us susceptible to misinformation effects. Across four experiments, we tested recognition memory for the Apple logo after incidentally encoding an accurate or altered version of the logo (Experiments 1–3), or after no incidental encounter of the logo prior to the surprise test (Experiment 4). Additionally, participants rated how much they liked the logo as a measure of processing fluency. Results demonstrated that incidentally viewing an altered version of the Apple logo can disrupt subsequent recognition of the correct logo, but this effect may diminish following a short delay. Considering our frequent exposure to everyday stimuli, we show conditions in which memory for a ubiquitous stimulus can be disrupted when incidentally presented with inaccurate information.

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