Adult development and Aging (Psychology)

The Issue of Inclusivity

by Timothy Wachtel

COAD, Complexity, and a Movement toward Coalescence of Blurred Boundaries

by Timothy Wachtel

Optimal Adult Development - A Meta-Process

by Timothy Wachtel

Optimal Adult Development - A brief chronology of terminology

by Timothy Wachtel

Italian students' social representation on aging: an exploratory study of a representational system

by João Wachelke

Wachelke, J. & Contarello, A. (2011). Italian students' social representation on aging: an exploratory study of a representational system. Psicologia Reflexao e Crítica, 24(3), 551-560.

In various countries there are studies aimed at characterizing social representations on aging, but little is known... more In various countries there are studies aimed at characterizing social representations on aging, but little is known about their relations with other representations. The present study proposes to characterize those relations through the notion of representational systems. An exploratory survey has been conducted with 151 Italian undergraduate students. They have completed evocation tasks about seven social objects linked to aging and also rated the distances among them. Distance ratings went through similarity analysis, while a prototypical analysis was carried out for aging and three objects: death, health and family. The results indicate possible content connections among representation elements and suggest a conjunction relationship between aging and family. The notion of representational systems opens possibilities for more refined representational characterizations.

Amor e sexualidade na velhice, direito nem sempre respeitado

by Thiago de Almeida

Resumo:
Em muitos dos levantamentos que são realizados fica evidenciado que os relacionamentos afetivossexuais têm sido considerados um domínio praticamente exclusivo das pessoas jovens, das pessoas com boa saúde e fisicamente atraentes. A ideia de que as pessoas de idade avançada também possam manter relações sexuais não é culturalmente muito aceita,
preferindo-se ignorar e fazer desaparecer do imaginário coletivo a sexualidade da pessoa idosa. Contudo, o amor e a sexualidade dos idosos, em nada diferem, na intensidade, do amor entre pessoas jovens. Apesar dos preconceitos, dos tabus e dos arcaicos estereótipos, com que as pessoas idosas se deparam, quando se trata de enamoramento e sexo entre
parceiros da Terceira Idade, é necessário que se enfrentem esses desafios com a maturidade que a idade traz. Faz-se necessário, portanto, acabar com os mitos, romper os paradigmas obsoletos, para que o envelhecer seja compatível com uma boa qualidade de vida.

Memory and communication support in dementia: research-based strategies for caregivers

by Nancy Pachana

Background: Difficulties with memory and communication are prominent and distressing features of dementia which impact... more Background: Difficulties with memory and communication are prominent and distressing features of dementia which impact on the person with dementia and contribute to caregiver stress and burden. There is a need to provide caregivers with strategies to support and maximize memory and communication abilities in people with dementia. In this project, a team of clinicians, researchers and educators in neuropsychology, psychogeriatrics, nursing and speech pathology translated research-based knowledge from these fields into a program of practical strategies for everyday use by family and professional caregivers.
Methods: From the available research evidence, the project team identified compensatory or facilitative strategies to assist with common areas of difficulty, and structured these under the mnemonics RECAPS (for memory) and MESSAGE (for communication). This information was adapted for presentation in a DVD-based education program in accordance with known characteristics of effective caregiver education.
Results: The resultant DVD comprises (1) information on the nature and importance of memory and communication in everyday life; (2) explanations of common patterns of difficulty and preserved ability in memory and communication across the stages of dementia; (3) acted vignettes demonstrating the strategies, based on authentic samples of speech in dementia; and (4) scenarios to prompt the viewer to consider the benefits of using the strategies.
Conclusion: Using a knowledge-translation framework, information and strategies can be provided to family and professional caregivers to help them optimize residual memory and communication in people with dementia. Future development of the materials, incorporating consumer feedback, will focus on methods for enabling wider dissemination.

Development and Validation of the Geriatric Anxiety Inventory

by Nancy Pachana

Background: Anxiety symptoms and anxiety disorders are highly prevalent among elderly people, although infrequently... more Background: Anxiety symptoms and anxiety disorders are highly prevalent among elderly people, although infrequently the subject of systematic research in this age group. One important limitation is the lack of a widely accepted instrument to measure dimensional anxiety in both normal old people and old people with mental health problems seen in various settings. Accordingly, we developed and tested of a short scale to measure anxiety in older people.
Methods: We generated a large number of potential items de novo and by reference to existing anxiety scales, and then reduced the number of items to 60 through consultation with a reference group consisting of psychologists, psychiatrists
and normal elderly people. We then tested the psychometric properties of these 60 items in 452 normal old people and 46 patients attending a psychogeriatric service. We were able to reduce the number of items to 20. We chose a 1-week
perspective and a dichotomous response scale.
Results: Cronbach’s α for the 20-item Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (GAI) was 0.91 among normal elderly people and 0.93 in the psychogeriatric sample. Concurrent validity with a variety of other measures was demonstrated in both the normal sample and the psychogeriatric sample. Inter-rater and test–retest
reliability were found to be excellent. Receiver operating characteristic analysis indicated a cut-point of 10/11 for the detection of DSM-IV Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) in the psychogeriatric sample, with 83% of patients correctly
classified with a specificity of 84% and a sensitivity of 75%.
Conclusions: The GAI is a new 20-item self-report or nurse-administered scale that measures dimensional anxiety in elderly people. It has sound psychometric properties. Initial clinical testing indicates that it is able to discriminate between those with and without any anxiety disorder and between those with and without DSM-IV GAD.

Attitudes, knowledge, and interest: preparing university students to work in an aging world

by Nancy Pachana

Background: The underlying goals of the present study were (i) to assess knowledge of and attitudes towards aging in a... more Background: The underlying goals of the present study were (i) to assess knowledge of and attitudes towards aging in a sample of Portuguese undergraduate students undertaking various degrees in health and welfare subjects, and (ii) to analyze the extent to which knowledge, attitudes and other factors were associated with interest in working with older adults.
Methods: The study was cross-sectional in design. The sample comprised 460 Portuguese undergraduate students enrolled in degrees in nursing, social work, and psychology. They were asked to complete questionnaires and quizzes, which were analyzed using contingency tables and one way analysis of variance for inter-group comparison, and then subjected to multivariate logistic regression analysis.
Results: Significant differences emerged between groups on knowledge, attitudes towards aging and interest in working with older adults, with both nursing and social work students displaying more positive attitudes, knowledge, and interest in working with older adults, when compared with psychology students. A regression analysis indicated that attitudes, knowledge, and previous formal contact were significant predictors of interest.
Conclusion: Interest in working with older adults was significantly related to positive attitudes, more knowledge and formal previous contact. Positive attitudes towards older adults can be promoted through interaction with faculty members and experts, knowledge acquisition about normative changes with age, and contact with healthy and impaired older adults.

Reporting of life events over time: methodological issues in a longitudinal sample of women

by Nancy Pachana

The number of life events reported by study participants is sensitive to the method of data collection and time... more The number of life events reported by study participants is sensitive to the method of data collection and time intervals under consideration. Individual characteristics also influence reporting; respondents with poor mental health report more life events. Much current research on life events is cross-sectional. Data from a longitudinal study of women’s health from 4 waves over a decade suggest that over time additional systematic biases in reporting life events occur. Inconsistency over time is due to both fall-off of reporting and telescoping. Intracategory variability and ambiguity of items, as well as respondent characteristics, also potentially contribute to response biases. Although some factors (e.g., item wording) are controllable, others (e.g., respondents’ mental health) are not and must be factored into data analysis and interpretation.

Anxiety and depression in the elderly: do we know any more?

by Nancy Pachana

Purpose of review
The advent of global population ageing raises understandable concerns about the high-prevalence... more Purpose of review
The advent of global population ageing raises understandable concerns about the high-prevalence mental disorders in older people. Accordingly, this review covers recently published scientific articles concerning anxiety and depression. Recent findings
There is a paucity of findings on anxiety in older people, although the availability of several new scales suggests increased interest in this topic. The low prevalence of late- life depression in many population surveys does not appear to be due to misattribution of depressive symptoms to physical disorders. Although it is well established that dementia leads to depression, there is now increasing evidence for the proposition that depression leads to cognitive decline and dementia. There is now good evidence also for a bidirectional relationship between obesity and depression. The prognosis of treated late-life depression varies with baseline neuropsychological function and the severity of white matter hyperintensities.
Summary
An excellent body of research on depression in older people is now available, although more work on both pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments is needed. More research is urgently required into anxiety disorders in older people. These are highly prevalent and associated with considerable disease burden. As the literature on depression in older people reaches maturity, there should be greater research and clinical interest in anxiety.

The impact of attrition on the representativeness of cohort studies of older people

by Nancy Pachana

Background: There are well-established risk factors, such as lower education, for attrition of study participants.... more Background: There are well-established risk factors, such as lower education, for attrition of study participants. Consequently, the representativeness of the cohort in a longitudinal study may deteriorate over time. Death is a common form of attrition in cohort studies of older people. The aim of this paper is to examine the effects of death and other forms of attrition on risk factor prevalence in the study cohort and the target population over time.
Methods: Differential associations between a risk factor and death and non-death attrition are considered under various hypothetical conditions. Empirical data from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH) for participants born in 1921-26 are used to identify associations which occur in practice, and national cross- sectional data from Australian Censuses and National Health Surveys are used to illustrate the evolution of bias over approximately ten years.
Results: The hypothetical situations illustrate how death and other attrition can theoretically affect changes in bias over time. Between 1996 and 2008, 28.4% of ALSWH participants died, 16.5% withdrew and 10.4% were lost to follow up. There were differential associations with various risk factors, for example, non-English speaking country of birth was associated with non-death attrition but not death whereas being underweight (body mass index < 18.5) was associated with death but not other forms of attrition. Compared to national data, underrepresentation of women with non-English speaking country of birth increased from 3.9% to 7.2% and over-representation of current and ex-smoking increased from 2.6% to 5.8%.
Conclusions: Deaths occur in both the target population and study cohort, while other forms of attrition occur only in the study cohort. Therefore non-death attrition may cause greater bias than death in longitudinal studies. However although more than a quarter of the oldest participants in the ALSWH died in the 12 years following recruitment, differences from the national population changed only slightly.

The effect of age on egocentric and allocentric spatial frames of reference

by Francesco Ruotolo

COGNITIVE PROCESSING
Volume 10, Supplement 2, 222-224, DOI: 10.1007/s10339-009-0276-9

Aging and Age-related Factors: Effects on Foreign Language Achievement

by salinee antarasena

Journal of English Studies. 3 (2007), 106-118