We drew from developmental theory regarding the timing of historical events in individuals' lives to examine age-related differences in self-reported masculine, feminine, and androgynous personality traits in a cross-sectional sample of American men (N=357) and women (N=404) representing six age groups (adolescents [12-17 years], younger [18-29 years], middle-aged [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59], young-old [60-69], old-old [70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79], and oldest-old [80 and older] adults). Oldest-old women were less likely than younger and middle-aged women to endorse masculine and androgynous traits. Men in their 70s (old-old) were more likely than adolescents and younger men to endorse androgynous traits. Discussion of the results emphasizes the implications of the second wave of the women's movement for understanding life-span gender development.

The present study examined individual and dyadic everyday problem solving in 45 younger, middle-aged, and older adult married couples. The goal of the study was to investigate the effects of age, gender, collaboration, marital characteristics, and basic cognition on everyday problemsolving. Two research questions were addressed. First, were there group differences across three phases of problem solving? Second, what was the frequency of individual change, and which factors predicted improvement, stability, or decline? When addressing the first question, there was a significant four-way interaction, F (4, 78) = 2.83, p < .05, η = .12, between participant age, gender, problem-solving condition, and problem-solving phase, emphasizing the multidimensionality of everyday cognition. When addressing the second question, a larger percentage of individuals who collaborated reliably improved compared to individuals who worked alone. Furthermore, basic cognitive abilities, education, and marital factors significantly accounted for individual reliable change in everyday problem solving.

Prior literature has relied on varied methodology to infer conclusions about adult problem solvers; possibly leading to erroneous assumptions about everyday problem-solving performance in adulthood. The present study examined everyday problem-solving performance of 133 younger, middle-aged, and older adults. The goal of the study was to investigate whether different scoring procedures (number vs. strategy type) or participant instructions (self target vs. others target) affected how adults performed on two types of open-ended problem-solving vignettes (home vs. friend problem domains). Differential age patterns were found when comparing the number and types of strategies reported. When assessing total number of solutions generated, middle-aged adults tended to record the most solutions, particularly when completing home problems or after given the others-target instructions. In terms of strategy type, older adults reported a higher proportion of proactive responses (problem-focused and cognitive-analytical strategies) than younger adults on friend problems. Cluster analysis revealed three types of problem solvers (i.e., most proactive; commentary; least proactive) based on reported strategies. Individuals comprising the least proactive group performed better on an inductive reasoning task and generated more overall solutions than individuals in the most proactive group. Findings from the study should compel researchers to be cautious when focusing on a particular scoring method as an index for effective problem solving, as the findings can differ based on scoring.

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