Isabelle Tournier

Crossing a two-way street: comparison of young and old pedestrians

INTRODUCTION Choosing a safe gap in which to cross a two-way street is a complex task and only few experiments have investigated age-specific difficulties. METHOD A total of 18 young (age 19-35), 28 younger-old (age 62-71) and 38 older-old (age 72-85 years) adults participated in a simulated street-crossing experiment in which vehicle approach speed and available time gaps were varied. The safe and controlled simulated environment allowed participants to perform a real walk across an experimental two-way street. The differences between the results for the two lanes are of particular interest to the study of visual exploration and crossing behaviors. RESULTS The results showed that old participants crossed more slowly, adopted smaller safety margins, and made more decisions that led to collisions than did young participants. These difficulties were found particularly when vehicles approached in the far lane, or rapidly. Whereas young participants considered the time gaps available in both lanes to decide whether to cross the street, old participants made their decisions mainly on the basis of the gap available in the near lane while neglecting the far lane. CONCLUSIONS The present results point to attentional deficits as well as physical limitations in older pedestrians. Several practical and have implications in terms of road design and pedestrian training are proposed.

Effects of depressive symptoms and routinization on metamemory during adulthood

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of aging, depressive symptoms and preference for routine on metamemory. Twenty-eight young adults (of mean age=20.7 years) and 28 older adults (68.5 years) completed the metamemory in adulthood (MIA) scale for assessing various metamemory dimensions. Compared with young adults, older adults used more external strategy. They used more internal strategy but only those with high depressive symptoms or high routinization. Older adults also reported a less efficient memory than young adults, showing less capacity and more change. In addition, depressive symptoms influenced many MIA subscales: participants with high depressive symptoms reported more external strategy use, less capacity, more change and less locus than participants with low depressive symptoms. Finally, highly routinized participants reported more use of external strategy and experienced more anxiety about memory. These results confirm the impact of aging on metamemory and show that an increase in depressive symptoms even without a depressive state and routinization also influences metamemory. This study shows the need to consider variables that modify memory perception during aging.

The association between routinization and cognitive resources in later life

The aim of this study was to investigate the association between routinization of daily life activities and cognitive resources during aging. Routinization could increase excessively during aging and become maladaptative in reducing individual resources. Fifty-two young participants (M = 20.8 years) and 62 older participants (M = 66.9 years) underwent a routinization scale and cognitive tasks of working memory, speed of processing, and attention. Results revealed that older adults presented a decrease on the three cognitive measures but no change on the routinization score. While no association was observed between routinization and cognitive measures for the young adults, a high routinization was associated with lower cognitive flexibility in the older adults. These findings are interpreted in the light of theories about the positive impact of variety in daily life environment on cognitive functions.

Investigation of age-related differences in an adapted Hayling task

The Hayling task is traditionally used to assess activation and inhibitory processes efficiency among various populations, such as elderly adults. However, the classical design of the task may also involve the influence of strategy use and efficiency of sentence processing in the possible differences between individuals. Therefore, the present study investigated activation and inhibitory processes in aging with two formats of an adapted Hayling task designed to reduce the involvement of these alternative factors. Thirty young adults (M=20.7 years) and 31 older adults (M=69.6 years) performed an adapted Hayling task including a switching block (i.e., unblocked design) in addition to the classical task (i.e., blocked design), and the selection of the response between two propositions. The results obtained with the classical blocked design showed age-related deficits in the suppression sections of the task but also in the initiation ones. These findings can be explained by a co-impairment of both inhibition and activation processes in aging. The results of the unblocked Hayling task, in which strategy use would be reduced, confirmed this age-related decline in both activation and inhibition processes. Moreover, significant correlations between the unblocked design and the Trail Making Test revealed that flexibility is equally involved in the completion of both sections of this design. Finally, the use of a forced-response choice offers a format that is easy to administer to people with normal or pathological aging. This seems particularly relevant for these populations in whom the production of an unrelated word often poses problems.

Strategy selection and aging: impact of item concreteness in paired-associate task.

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to examine the effect of aging on strategy selection in a paired-associate word task. Twenty-eight younger adults (mean age = 20.68 years) and 28 older adults (mean age = 68.46 years) studied 39 pairs of concrete, middle and abstract words. The concreteness level was manipulated in order to modify the benefit of imagery and sentence strategies in relation to task characteristics. The results showed an age difference in strategy selection in relation to concreteness level. Older adults showed less adaptive strategy selection for the imagery strategy but not for the sentence strategy. Change in strategy selection did not seem to be explained by better efficiency of sentence than imagery, so this study suggests a partial reduction of strategy adaptivity during aging.

Arrival-time judgments on multiple-lane streets: The failure to ignore irrelevant traffic

How do road users decide whether or not they have enough time to cross a multiple-lane street with multiple approaching vehicles? Temporal judgments have been investigated for single cars approaching an intersection; however, close to nothing is known about how street crossing decisions are being made when several vehicles are simultaneously approaching in two adjacent lanes. This task is relatively common in urban environments. We report two simulator experiments in which drivers had to judge whether it would be safe to initiate street crossing in such cases. Matching traffic gaps (i.e., the temporal separation between two consecutive vehicles) were presented either with cars approaching on a single lane or with cars approaching on two adjacent lanes, either from the same side (Experiment 1) or from the opposite sides (Experiment 2). The stimuli were designed such that only the shortest gap was decision-relevant. The results showed that when the two gaps were in sight simultaneously (Experiment 1), street-crossing decisions were also influenced by the decision-irrelevant longer gap. Observers were more willing to cross the street when they had access to information about the irrelevant gap. However, when the two gaps could not be seen simultaneously but only sequentially (Experiment 2), only the shorter and relevant gap influenced the street-crossing decisions. The results are discussed within the framework of perceptual averaging processes, and practical implications for road safety are presented.

Successful ageing and multi-dimensional poverty: the case of Peru

ABSTRACT This study investigated the determinants of Successful Ageing (SA) in a sample of 4,151 Peruvians aged between 65 and 80 years and living in poverty. A key contribution of this study is to combine the conceptual appeal of SA to measure wellbeing in old age with the multi-dimensional poverty counting approach developed in the economic literature. This setting allows for moving beyond the dichotomy of successful and usual ageing to take advantage of the full distribution of success along a set of dimensions of wellbeing. The data are drawn from the Encuesta de Salud y Bienestar del Adulto Mayor (ESBAM) survey, which is the baseline to evaluate the non-contributory public pension programme Pension 65. Nine indicators of SA have been used to assess the dimensions of physical health, functioning, cognition, emotional health and life satisfaction. The variables associated with a higher number of satisfied indicators were male gender, younger old age, literate, employed, low food insecurity, good nutritional status, normal blood pressure, absence of disabilities, non-smoker, empowerment, good self-esteem, absence of mental disability and less frequent contact with a social network. From a policy perspective, the results of this study report a remarkably stable effect of three variables affecting SA that can be relatively easy to measure, monitor and influence by public intervention. These variables are food security, nutrition quality and self-esteem.

Animal-Assisted Intervention in Dementia: Effects on Neuropsychiatric Symptoms and on Caregivers’ Distress Perceptions

The present work assesses the efficacy of an animal-assisted therapy (AAT) program in the reduction of neuropsychiatric symptoms in older adults with medium to severe dementia. Performed in an Alzheimer’s disease/dementia care unit, the intervention included 11 elderly residents aged 71 to 93 years (mean age = 82.91 years; mean Mini-Mental State Examination score = 7.8/30). Behaviors during the AAT sessions as well as pre/post intervention neuropsychiatric symptoms were examined during this 5-month weekly intervention conducted by an AAT-certified psychologist along with her dog. AAT had a positive effect on total score and caregiver distress score for several neuropsychiatric symptoms (i.e., delusion, depression, disinhibition, euphoria, and aberrant motor activity). Moreover, the ratings of the various behaviors during each session suggest that the beneficial effects of AAT appear during the first few sessions. These results support the notion that regular and long-term AAT sessions are an effective alternative to pharmacological interventions for the reduction of neuropsychiatric symptoms.

''The closer you get …'': age, attitudes and self-serving evaluations about older drivers

The present study investigates the attitudes of older drivers and road safety measures with a particular focus on self-serving evaluations. Driving capacity is considered here as an indicator of awareness of age-related changes that may lead to a higher risk of self-stereotyping, motivating self-serving evaluations with advancing age. In order to test this notion, we used the perceived distance between ones chronological age and the age assigned to the social categories of “older driver” and “old person” as an indicator of age-group dissociation or identification, respectively. Self-serving evaluations were expected depending on the distance between chronological and subjective age estimates. In addition to this, we tested gender and age effects on the specific evaluations. A sample of 350 participants aged 19–88 completed an online questionnaire on negative and positive stereotypes about older drivers and road safety measures. Results indicated in general a more positive than negative view of older drivers; approval with measures to increase road safety by regulating older drivers was comparatively low. Female participants tended to agree more with negative stereotypes and regulative measures than male participants. Regression analyses revealed as well that increasing chronological age was associated with less agreement with negative stereotypes and measures for road safety. Differences between chronological age and subjective age estimates of when a person is old or an old driver were differentially related with the criteria. The closer the chronological age and subjective age estimates were the lower was the agreement with negative stereotypes and measures to regulate road safety. Findings underline in general that road safety enhancing efforts should avoid highlighting chronological age as the sole driving risk factor to circumvent negative stereotyping with ageing and unjustified driving cessation.

Autobiographical Memory, Self-Regulation, and Well-Being

The aim of this chapter is to highlight how autobiographical memory (AM) is related to well-being—how it is selectively used for adaptive self-regulation and how it serves different goals in different life phases. A structural view of AM is presented in a first section, with a description of theories related to the self-regulation aspects of AM. These aspects are illustrated in a second section by phenomena related to AM: The reminiscence bump, negativity/positivity effects, and the self-enhancement function linked to positive memories. The third and last section deals with AM-related therapeutic interventions that serve to improve or maintain personal meaning and SWB.