Everyday memory performance across the life span: Effects of age and noncognitive individual differences.

West, Robin L.; Crook, Thomas H.; Barron, Kristina L.

doi:10.1037/0882-7974.7.1.72

Cited by 111 publications

(102 citation statements)

References 39 publications

(61 reference statements)

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“…Physical health could also be important, given a link between poorer health status and lower cognitive functioning (e.g., Hultsch, MacDonald, Hunter, Levy-Bencheton, & Strauss, 2000). Depending on the cognitive task, gender differences could also play a role (e.g., Larrabee & Crook, 1993;West, Crook, & Barron, 1992). Because of the well-documented age differences in many cognitive measures (e.g., Salthouse, 1996), there could be age differences in memory failures.…”

Section: Nih-pa Author Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neuroticism moderates the daily relation between stressors and memory failures.

Neupert¹,

Mroczek²,

Spiro³

2008

Psychology and Aging

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The present investigation extends previous work on the relationship between daily stressors and memory failures in a naturalistic setting by examining whether this relationship varies across levels of neuroticism. A daily diary study of 333 older adults (mean age = 73.27 years, SD = 7.17) in the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study (see A. Spiro & R. Bossé, 2001, for additional information) was used to examine whether there were neuroticism differences in cognitive reactivity to daily stressors. Multilevel models indicated that on days when people high in neuroticism experienced stressors, particularly interpersonal stressors, they were more likely to report memory failures compared to those who were lower in neuroticism. The findings may have important implications for age-related cognitive decline. Keywords neuroticism; daily stressors; interpersonal stressors; memory failures; intraindividual variability Neuroticism, and the constant elevated levels of negative affect that accompany the trait over years or decades, can lead to a negative emotion "hair trigger" in older adulthood (Kendler, Thornton, & Gardner, 2001;. This process suggests that as people high in neuroticism grow older, they become more susceptible to elevated negative affect. Therefore, they may become hypersensitive to stress. Indeed, Mroczek, Spiro, Griffin, and Neupert (2006) reported that older adults high in neuroticism were the most reactive to stressors (compared with younger and middle-aged adults). More recently, Mroczek and Spiro (2007) NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript neuroticism in older men were associated with elevated mortality risk, which points to the potential of high neuroticism to influence physical health outcomes. Mroczek and Spiro (2003) also found that older men with high levels of neuroticism complained of more memory problems than did those with low levels of neuroticism. Given these findings and the previously documented associations between laboratory-based stressors and cognition (e.g., Lupien & Lepage, 2001;McEwen, 2000;Sapolsky, 1999) as well as naturalistic stressors and memory failures (Neupert, Almeida, Mroczek, & Spiro, 2006a), it is important to examine whether older adults high in neuroticism exhibit patterns of hypersensitivity to daily stressors with respect to their daily memory. Although this process of hypersensitivity is often observed for negative affect, it has yet to be established with daily memory failures. Because the sample in the present study consisted of older adults, we were able to examine this process in people for whom age-related declines in memory (whether real or perceived) might be particularly salient.The tendency of people high in neuroticism to react to stressful situations with high negative affect is called the stress reactivity effect (Bolger & Schilling, 1991;Suls, 2001), and it is perhaps the central concept in understanding individual differences in mood regulation (Mroczek et al., 2006). When people high in neuroticism ex...

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Section: Nih-pa Author Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neuroticism moderates the daily relation between stressors and memory failures.

Neupert¹,

Mroczek²,

Spiro³

2008

Psychology and Aging

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“…For instance, West, Crook, and Barron (1992) reported that verbal ability, a measure of crystallized ability (Cattell, 1971), was the best predictor of performance on certain tests of everyday memory (i.e., memory for telephone number and news). With regard to the basic abilities associated with the broad fluid domain (Cattell, 1971), Kirasic, Allen, Dobson, and Binder (1996) reported that working memory was the strongest predictor of individual differences on a set of measures assessing declarative learning for information from everyday stimuli (i.e., a bus schedule, a map, and a menu).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Everyday cognition: Age and intellectual ability correlates.

Allaire¹,

Marsiske²

1999

Psychology and Aging

157

230

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The primary aim of this study was to examine the relationship between a new battery of everyday cognition measures, which assessed 4 cognitive abilities within 3 familiar real-world domains, and traditional psychometric tests of the same basic cognitive abilities. Several theoreticians have argued that everyday cognition measures are somewhat distinct from traditional cognitive assessment approaches, and the authors investigated this assertion correlationally in the present study. The sample consisted of 174 community-dwelling older adults from the Detroit metropolitan area, who had an average age of 73 years. Major results of the study showed that (a) each everyday cognitive test was strongly correlated with the basic cognitive abilities; (b) several basic abilities, as well as measures of domain-specific knowledge, predicted everyday cognitive performance; and (c) everyday and basic measures were similarly related to age. The results suggest that everyday cognition is not unrelated to traditional measures, nor is it less sensitive to age-related differences. The present study was conducted to address two questions regarding older adults' cognitive performance with problems drawn from everyday life. First, the validity of several newly developed cognitive assessments using "everyday" stimuli was assessed. Specifically, in this study we examined the relationships between traditional psychometric measures and a new battery of everyday intellectual tasks. Second, within an ethnically heterogeneous sample of older adults ranging from 60 to over 90 years of age, we investigated whether age differences found with everyday cognition measures were similar to those found with psychometric ability tests or whether the greater familiarity and relevance of tasks using real-world stimuli might attenuate cross-sectional age differences as some theorists have proposed. For the purposes of this study, everyday cognition was conceptualized as the performance of individuals on problems using natural stimuli (e.g., real food package labels or official documents), and the problems were constructed to be similar to tasks older individuals might actually be called on to perform in their daily lives (e.g., identifying nutrition information or comparing the value of different financial products). This study is embedded in a larger body of research concerned with understanding the cognitive performance of individuals in the context of their daily lives. Specifically, proponents of the ecological approach have maintained that in the real world individuals can draw on domain-relevant experiences and naturalistic motivations to enhance their cognitive performance (e.g., Ceci & Bronfenbrenner, 1991; Neisser, 1978, 1991; Weisz, 1978) and that relatively "acontextual" laboratory-based assessments of cognition may produce an underestimation of true performance competencies (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Conway, 1991; Wagner, 1986). Historically, it has also been argued that traditional or academic measures of cognition and intelligence are biased tow...

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“…Recent studies reporting gender differences in episodic memory are listed in Table 1. The majority of these studies come from research on adult age differences in memory (Hill et a1., 1995;Hultsch, Masson, & Small, 1991;Larrabee & Crook, 1993;Rabbitt, Donlan, Watson, McInnes, & Bent, 1995;Schaie & Willis, 1993;West, Crook, & Barron, 1992;Zelinski, Gilewski, & Schaie, 1993), but gender differences have also been reported in studies done to evaluate or establish norms for memory tests (Bolla- Wilson & Bleecker, 1986;Geffen, Moar, O'Hanlon, Clark, & Geffen, 1990;Ruff, Light, & Quayhagen, 1988;Temple & Cornish, 1993). Although most episodic memory research has involved verbal materials, gender differences in episodic memory have also been found with the use of other types of materials, such as faces (Hill et aI., 1995;McKelvie, Standing, St. Jean, & Law, 1993;Wahlin et aI., 1993), pictures (Galea & Kimura, 1993), locations (Eals & Silverman, 1994;Hill et aI., 1995), and odors (Lehmer, 1993).…”

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confidence: 99%

Gender differences in episodic memory

1997

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The relationship between gender and memory has been largely neglected by research, despite occasional studies reporting gender differences in episodic memory performance. The present study examined potential gender differences in episodic memory, semantic memory, primary memory, and priming. Five hundred thirty women and 470 men, randomly sampled from the city of Umea, Sweden, 35-80 years of age, participated in the study. There were no differences between men and women with regard to age or education, or on a measure of global intellectual functioning. As has been demonstrated previously, men outperformed women on a visuospatial task and women outperformed men on tests of verbal fluency. In addition, the results demonstrated that women consistently performed at a higher level than did men on the episodic memory tasks, although there were no differences between men and women on the tasks assessing semantic memory, primary memory, or priming. The women's higher level of performance on the episodic memory tasks could not be fully explained by their higher verbal ability.In 1974, Maccoby and Jacklin published their highly cited work on gender differences in various human abilities and functions. They concluded that girls have greater verbal ability than boys do; that boys excel in visuospatial and mathematical ability; and that males are more aggressive than females. However, Maccoby and Jacklin rejected the hypothesis of gender differences in learning and memory. Since then, virtually no systematic research has been conducted on potential gender differences in memory.In the area oflearning and memory, Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) categorized the studies that they reviewed in terms of conditioning, discrimination learning, pairedassociate learning, oddity problems, probability learning, learning through modeling, incidental learning, and memory. In retrospect, however, if one applies the current, widely used model of five separate but interacting

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Everyday memory performance across the life span: Effects of age and noncognitive individual differences.

Cited by 111 publications

References 39 publications

Neuroticism moderates the daily relation between stressors and memory failures.

Neuroticism moderates the daily relation between stressors and memory failures.

Everyday cognition: Age and intellectual ability correlates.

Gender differences in episodic memory

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